How it all started

The Wiki pages on non-profit and advocacy journalism are interesting, especially the notes about the notion of "objectivity" in journalism, an idea I more or less reject.

Many believe that there is no such thing as objective reporting, that there will always be some form of implicit bias, whether political, personal, or metaphysical, whether intentional or subconscious. This is not necessarily a rejection of the existence of an objective reality, merely a statement about our inability to report on it in a value-free fashion. This may sound like a radical idea, but many mainstream journalists accept the philosophical idea that pure "objectivity" is impossible, but still seek to minimize bias in their work. Other journalistic standards, such as balance, and neutrality, may be used to describe a more practical kind of "objectivity".

"Alternative" critics often charge that the mainstream's media claims of being "bias free" are harmful because they paper over inevitable (often subconscious) biases. They also argue that media sources claiming to be free of bias often advance certain political ideas which are disguised in a so-called "objective" viewpoint. [!!!] These critics contend that the mainstream media reinforce majority-held ideas, marginalizing dissent and retarding political and cultural discourse.

The proposed solution is to make biases explicit, with the intention of promoting transparency and self-awareness that better serves media consumers. Advocacy journalists often assume that their audiences will share their biases (especially in politically charged alternative media), or will at least be conscious of them while evaluating what are supposed to be well-researched and persuasive arguments.

I note that the latter quotes Sue Careless who

gave the following commentary and advice to advocacy journalists, which seeks to establish a common view of what journalistic standards the genre should follow.

- Acknowledge your perspective up front.
- Be truthful, accurate, and credible. Don't spread propaganda, don't take quotes or facts out of context, "don't fabricate or falsify", and "don't judge or suppress vital facts or present half-truths"
- Don't give your opponents equal time, but don't ignore them, either.
- Explore arguments that challenge your perspective, and report embarrassing facts that support the opposition. Ask critical questions of people who agree with you.
- Avoid slogans, ranting, and polemics. Instead, "articulate complex issues clearly and carefully."
- Be fair and thorough.
- Make use of neutral sources to establish facts.

Sue Careless also criticized the mainstream media for unbalanced and politically biased coverage, for economic conflicts of interest, and for neglecting certain public causes. She said that alternative publications have advantages in independence, focus, and access, which make them more effective public-interest advocates than the mainstream media.

It's interesting that many years ago, I spoke with Sue at a meeting of Real Women of Canada in Halifax and said that I was interested in getting into journalism, and asked her if she thought it would be better to go to the journalism school at King's College, where I was already enrolled in Classics, or to just dive in and start writing and submitting things to publications. She said that J-school was a massive waste of time and money, that all they ever did there was indoctrinate young people politically and that graduates from those kinds of schools could barely write a coherent sentence in English.

I took her advice and started writing for the Dalhousie University student newspaper, and submitted a few things for the Interim.

Boy, was she ever right!



~

School of Journalism

Articles from Mainstreamia can be confusing. In Mainstreamia, words do not always mean what they mean to Normal People. I thought I would help with an analysis of some Mainstreamian vocabulary with which our readers may not be familiar:

"gaffe-prone" (with or without hyphen), as in

"Gaffe-prone Pope Benedict XVI will be tested on delicate trip to divided island of Cyprus. Pope Benedict XVI, often under fire for political missteps on foreign trips, is heading into a potential diplomatic storm when he visits Cyprus this week, a pilgrimage to a divided island that could anger Turkey and the rest of the Muslim world.

The article helps by helpfully giving examples which we will analyse to produce a working definition:

1) Regensburg address = gaffe *.

At that time Benedict said that God, in order to be the actual real God, had to be logically consistent: rational. Therefore, a being who claimed to be God but contradicted himself, couldn't really be God. This "logically consistent" idea is a concept that Mainstreamians don't have, a trait they share with Muslims, who also have difficulty with "irony," (see posts labeled "The Laws of Rational Thought" on the sidebar). So, when Muslims reacted with violence to Benedict's admonition that they should not be violent, Mainstreamians said it was Benedict's fault, because he had produced this "gaffe".

2) Condoms make the problem of AIDS worse = gaffe.

On the plane on the way to Africa last year, Benedict made everyone in the world Mainstreamia who was already mad at him for being the pope even madder by saying their pet project to exterminate sterilise free the Africans from the oppressive shackles of sexual and moral self-control is a bad thing.

It sounds confusing at first, but try to see it from the point of view of Mainstreamian thought. In Mainstreamian thought, it is not sexual contact with infected persons that spreads sexually transmitted diseases. It is something they call "unsafe sex", which means sex without a condom. Therefore, you aren't allowed to say that it is a bad thing to give Africa (and other uncomfortable places with bad air conditioning) container vessels full of condoms and to tell them to be like the cool kids North Americans/Europeans, and have a lot of sex outside of marriage.

Remember, sex does not spread AIDS; unsafe sex spreads AIDS. Saying it is a good idea to only ever have sex with someone you are already married to, is Bad.

It makes people have sex without condoms, which is what gives you AIDS.

From these helpful examples, we can deduce that in Mainstreamian, the word "gaffe" means "When the pope says something true that we don't like".

Hope this helps.

* Also referred to as a "political misstep," in case anyone were still foggy on "gaffe".

Talking Shop

with Andrew Cusack,

He flattered me the other day by sending a note asking which Italian papers I read daily...

I reply:

Hmmm...

I hate to admit this to such a world-famous newspaper fan as yourself, but I actually don't read any Italian papers, except for the free ones that get left on the train.

Two reasons for this:

- am lazy.
- don't read enough Italian to make it worth the effort.

But when I lived in England (oh! dear me! how briefly and how much longed-for now!) I took the Telegraph nearly every day in the mournful hope that it would tidy itself up and become again the great thing it used to be. The last time I picked up the Telegraph, however, was at my two-hour stopover at Heathrow in January. As I plonked myself down in the Nervous Seat in the departure lounge, I was distressed to see that it had been reduced in size.

"Hey, didn't this used to be a broadsheet?"

And, if I'm not mistaken, it had colour pictures on the front... disgraceful! I was ashamed to be seen with it.

Now I go down occasionally to the newsagent kiosk in the Campo di Fiori and buy a Telegraph and a Spectator, to squeeze the last little dribbles of conservatism out of the English press, but it is a sad and nostalgic task, nearly always ending with me being more depressed than before.

I like magazines better. I'm saving up to get an overseas subscription to the Oldie (which is itself distressingly full of words like "partners" and stories of old people moving in together and living in sin...).

Why aren't there any magazines for young tweedy fogies like us who can't stand the sight of sixty year-old ladies wearing jeans?

Cusack responds...

The problem with the Telegraph, ironically, is that it actually makes money, so no one is willing to increase its quality for fear of disturbing its money-making status. I think this is illogical, and that given their readership they could only make more money if they went a bit more high-brow than of late, but they probably don't want to lose the constituency of housewives who would read the Daily Mail but are a bit socially ambitious so pick up the Telly instead.

Last time I was in London I solved the usual conundrum of what English paper to buy by just getting the Scotsman, or every so often the Irish Times, instead. Both leave a lot to be desired but the Scotsman covers my favourite land in the whole world and the Irish Times is brazenly wide in its broadsheet size. (Irritatingly it gets shrunk for overseas printing).

The Spectator's relatively new editor is an Oratory-attending Catholic, much better than his predecessor Matthew d'Ancona, so there's hope for the Speccie improving. Say what you want about it, but if you ever compare the Spectator to National Review, the Spectator comes out looking like gold.

The Oldie is strange like that! I sometimes get the sense that it's as if their age and experience is telling them one thing but they're still trying to convince themselves the rot of the modern world is good and true. Still, every now and then they have some excellent stuff.

As to the conundrum presented in the link you sent, the basic reality is this: the general-purpose profit-making newspaper is dead. This is NOT the same as saying 'newspapers are dead', because they're not.

There are a few ways for newspapers to succeed in these days.

1) Be owned by someone who owns a multiplicity of other, much more profit-making ventures, thus being able to subsidise the newspaper in exchange for the political influence and/or cultural cachet it brings.

2) Trusts. The Irish Times and the Guardian are run by charitable trusts instead of being profit-seeking ventures and both have been fairly successful.

3) Niche-ification. Find a niche and stick to it. The New York Observer is a weekly aimed at relatively wealthy, college-educated Manhattanites. The (monthly) Arts Newspaper covers the art world extensively. There are a few legal daily newspapers.

4) Being of such high quality that readers will want to read and buy your newspaper. BUT high quality isn't very profitable unless you're aiming for a certain kind of high quality, namely the wealthy, so that you can bring in the most lucrative kind of advertising. And among the wealthy you have too many men interested primarily in making money and too many women interested primarily in following fashions for high quality to really be what you or I would think of as high quality.

5) Having a monopoly. For example, if you're the only newspaper operating on, say, a small Caribbean island, you're pretty much set. The weakness is that, if complacency and lack of competition drives your product down, it would be easy for a deep-pocketed rival to set up shop and there goes your monopoly.

But I don't see how outfits like the Los Angeles Times or Boston Globe are going to survive unless they radically reorganise themselves with their locations as their niche, which they are loath to do because everyone wants to be a big shot.

There's my two cents!

The net is going to destroy the media

Is destroying it, by exposing its own absurd and absurdly obvious deceptions.They're becoming the butt of everyone's jokes since the scandals that ended whatsis name's career a few years ago.

"More than any other event, the March reveals the truly eye-popping, mind-boggling corruption of the Mainstream Media."

...but I hope my friends will remind me to just say no whenever I get the urge to interview a tearful teenage girl...


yeeee!


I shudder...

(If you feel the need to skip her cringeworthy deeply personal sharing experience, she's on from 5:32 to about 6:09)

Balanced reporting

CNN gets it right...

barely

"It does appear to me, as I look at these signs, that ....uuuhhhh...which side is represented the most? Do we know?...We want to make sure that we report it fairly and squarely..."

Just at the moment when the March started from the Mall, my camera batteries crapped out. I was standing on the Hill close to the Capital Building, and thought I could just make it back to the hotel for the spares, so I made a dash. I was almost in time to get close to the front, but missed the first stages of the March.




JH and I spent two hours in front of the Supreme Court taking pictures of the countless thousands of people streaming past and when we were finally too tired to keep it up, we started walking back down the Hill. We were walking against the tide of humanity for an hour before we managed to get the hundred yards or so back to New Jersey Avenue where the hotel was, and when we finally turned away to cut across the park, there was still an hour or so's worth of people coming up the hill from the Mall.

I had been quite interested in talking to some of the counter-protesters and was hoping to get some of their comments recorded, so I was looking for them. Couldn't find them in the crowd though.

But of course, we already know that there were no




young


women


there


at


all.


Nope...


not


a


one.

Maybe Mizz. Gesaman meant there are no young women on the other side of the issue.

I'd well believe it.

“The organizers are getting older, and it’s more difficult for them to walk a long distance,” says Stanley Radzilowski, an officer in the planning unit for the Washington, D.C., police department. A majority of the participants are in their 60s and were the original pioneers either for or against the case, he says.

So this raises the question: where are the young, vibrant women supporting their pro-life or pro-choice positions? Likely, they’re at home. “Young women are still concerned about these issues, but they’re not trained to go out and protest,” says Kristy Maddux, assistant professor at the University of Maryland, who specializes in historical feminism.

More on why journalism is failing

David Blevins, a former Washington correspondent for Sky News, was asked in 2008 whether the media in America and the UK understands "evangelical Christians," [note, in Britain, the term "evangelical Christians" functions as a euphemism for "believing" Christians, since the "mainstream" Christians like Catholics and Anglicans don't actually believe anything,] he said:

“Not at all. It’s important to remember that what appears in the newspapers is not an objective summary of the significant things that happened yesterday but an ideological selection based on the prejudices, agendas and assumptions of a relatively small group of people. Their ideology could be loosely defined as ‘progress will one day meet our needs.’ So as with other forms of thought that deviate from that ideological view, evangelical Christianity is either dismissed out of hand or reported in a manner that serves to reinforce the ideology!

Journalists hate Christianity. Most people who read newspapers and magazines and watch TV news are Christians. Ergo: journalists are failing to communicate intelligently to their audience (ie: their customers, the people who pay their expense accounts).

It's not that hard to figure out why the internet has killed even things as old, huge and fleshy as the New York Times.

Warren on why journalism doesn't work

Winter solstice tomorrow (12:47 p.m. EST). I mention this baldly and up front as a little protest against the contemporary journalistic habit to be generous with interpretation, but stingy with facts. One must often scan through ill-written prose in fruitless search for the fact one is seeking -- the actual seat count from an election; the precise event and location at which some luminary was speaking; the source for some widely cited statistic; or even the actual date and time of an astronomical event.

Often all we get is the number killed. But that tends to be an instance from category three, above: a "widely cited statistic." In such a case, I want to know who provided the number. Then I would like to hear other numbers, from other sources -- for in my experience, whether a catastrophe is "natural," or the product of human malice, it must have happened in a specific jurisdiction. And within most of the specific jurisdictions of this world, games are being played with numbers.

Yep.

Very often, a large part of my work consists of backtracking information from news sources (NYT, Guardian, Telegraph, BBC etc) to the actual place where the information comes from. Very often, and I mean very often, the source is actually providing information that is the precise opposite of the conclusion drawn by the news source.

I remember once, in fact, when the news agencies merely anticipated the results of a given action and started writing stories about something that hadn't happened yet in order to make it start happening.

And it is a regular thing, as Warren says, to have to wade through hundreds of words of blather before finding the actual nut at the centre. In many cases, the actual vote count, jurisdiction, date, name or specific act isn't mentioned at all and I have to sift through dozens of pieces before being able to cobble together what actually happened. Sometimes it is impossible, even by calling the principles in the case.

I was just down at the Sala Stampa earlier this afternoon and commented to my friend the accreditation guy that when I got into this business I had no idea that journalists are the second most hated profession in the world. Silly me.

Journalists, our intellectual and moral superiors...

EU Referendum on the recent astonishing revelations that the whole "global warming" thing has been a big, government and media-approved hoax:

On the ball as always, with the latest orthodoxy, Reuters is happily reassuring us (itself) that the revelation of a series of "embarrassing" e-mails is not a "game changer".

The proof of this assertion comes with the cast-iron, copper-bottomed mantra which wards off all evils, the answer to life, the universe and everything ... "experts believe ... ". Ranking alongside "scientists say ... ", these mantras are the modern equivalent of garlic used to ward off the devil (aka sceptics).

Personally, I always liked "...a new study has revealed".

Just a little aside, as Kathy likes to say, can we PUH-Lease drop this whole "-gate" thing?

She suggests naming every political scandal "-aquiddick" instead.

Media biases

Was at the Sala Stampa this afternoon. Took a little wander around. They've got this cool room


full of little cubicles where you can use the Vatican's computers or hook your own laptop up to the Vatican's internet. I'm betting there are a lot of 3rd world journalists who really need to make use of this.

I also noted that there was a shelf of mail boxes for certain privileged denizens of the Holy See Press Office.


If you're one of the big kids, you get your very own box.

Some day.

If we explain it s l o w l y e n o u g h

maybe they will understand.

(What? It could happen)

L'Osservatore Romano just couldn't help itself, I guess:

Crediting Kennedy with being "constantly on the front line in battles over such matters as the protection of immigrants, arms control, the minimum wage," it adds that "but he also unfortunately took positions favorable to abortion."

The article does not mention that, in addition, the senator supported deadly embryonic stem cell research, "homosexual marriage," and the the funding of contraceptive distribution programs, all positions anathema to the Catholic Church.

Are you paying very close attention? Concentrating? Got that voice recorder running so you can review later?

OK, here we go:

Theologically speaking, the one characteristic that unites all the issues you mention, like arms control, minimum wage, immigration and "civil rights" (the black movement for those not accustomed to US journalese) is that these are all issues on which Catholics can disagree in good conscience. The Catholic Church does not rule on how Catholics must respond to them.

In addition, the solutions to poverty, immigration, taxation, wages, crime and "civil rights" offered by the left are not the same as the teaching of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

We get, for example, to say that the US winning the arms race against the Soviets was a categorically Good Thing.

We get to say that a Big Brother government imposing minimum wages, price controls and tax burdens on businesses is actually really bad for the economy and therefore bad for "The Poor" (TM).

We get to say that the death penalty is a good thing and that too many immigrants coming in from cultures that are radically different from that of the receiving country does great harm.

We get to say that the best way to get people out of poverty is to refuse to give them welfare.

We get to say that the Americans made a huge mistake in pulling out of Saigon and not pushing forward into North Korea in order to contain the red threat from the East.

We get to say that black people (and Indians) would be better off if we stopped telling them how hard done by they are and giving them welfare.

These are all perfectly legitimate opinions to be held by Catholics, supported by Catholic teahing.

Now, here's a quiz for you: what is the one defining characteristic of the other issues mentioned (and not mentioned) by L'Osservatore Romano (the Pope's Paper), which Ted "unfortunately" supported?

I'll give you a minute to think about it.

Oh, and one more point for L'Osservatore Romano, strictly about journalistic integrity: when you want to maintain a facade of objectivity, might be a good idea not to refer to Senator Edward Kennedy as "Ted". Mkay?

"appeared"

"...appeared to show insufficient concern for the life of a woman..."

Who owns the Boston Globe, anyone know?


Here's a little something to remember him by.

"News results
Results 1 – 10 of about 3,702 for 'Kopechne'."

Friends?

"Does Obama have a friend in the Vatican?"

More than the New York Times can possibly imagine.

I told you to do that before we left!

Forget something, Holy Father?

Well well. Pope Benedict has gone off on another politically delicate trip without having sacked that walking, talking leg-hold trap he employs as a media spokesman.

I expect the headlines over the next few days will be very interesting. It doesn't seem to matter now what the Pope actually says, as long as he's got his perfidious faithful Lombardi with him, I'm sure it will be an exciting week.

The media is certainly starting off on the right note:

HaaretzFar-rightist MK: Hitler Youth pope not welcome in Israel

ReutersIslamists say Pope's Mideast visit provocative

the Guardian Pope Benedict must be a 'penitent pilgrim' on Jerusalem visit

Now here's something you don't see every day in the media

an actual African, on AIDS programmes in Africa:


Nigeria: In Defence of the Pope
by Nwachukwu Egbunike
4 May 2009

...

I was in Cameroon for the papal visit and his statement on condoms was a non-issue. On the contrary Cameroonians were grateful to Benedict for telling the truth to power. His admonition to Christians to speak out against "corruption and abuses of power" was a hit, precipitating a domino effect. Curiously enough, this was hardly reported by most foreign media. Perhaps threatened by Benedict's nerve to contest their 'infallibility' in setting global agenda for HIV/AIDS, the media became hysterical.

This condescending attitude was not lost on most of us in the news business. This is not the first, nor will it be the last time that Africa will be viewed from the biased prism of a childish continent. The issue of condoms and the curtailing of transmission of HIV/AIDS have always been controversial.

Remarkably there are two schools of thoughts. Some elitist African puppets, who have been milking most of these foreign agencies, give the impression that all we need is condoms. On the other hand, the less vocal majority, know that the African worldview is essentially polygamous. Thus any intervention that does not put this into account is bound to fail.

That is why; condoms will not solve the AIDS palaver, rather it will only aggravate it. Condom advocacy is like trying to quench a fire with petrol.

But of course, well, honestly, he's just a darkie.

What can he possibly know?

Shock! Scandal! Pope "saddens" those struggling against depression with "imprudent" comments on weather

Italian Media is reporting a new storm over Pope Benedict comments

Returning from Africa, just landed in Rome on a sunny afternoon, the Pope would have exclaimed with journalists: "It's a beautiful day today."

This "imprudent" comment has raised worldwide concern and strong feelings and is fueling a growing controversy.

Some of the most significant reactions:

The Archbishop of Salzburg: "We reaffirm the full fidelity of the Church of Austria to Pope and we embrace him. But the question is, if by chance he does not want to regress the Church to an animist sect of sun worshipers. After this statement, the number of people who have requested to be removed from the tax records to support the Catholic Church has significantly increased."

Alain Juppé, former French prime minister and now mayor of Bordeaux: "at the moment when the Pope pronounced these words, it rained in Bordeaux. This counter-truth, next to the denial, showing that the pope lives in a state of total autism. This destroys, if you still need proof, the papal dogma of infallibility".

Margherita Hack, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at La Sapienza said, "saying in no uncertain terms and with no clear objective evidence" that the weather is good today, "the Pope shows the well-known disdain for the Church of Science, which always fights dogmatism. What's more subjective than this notion of "beautiful"? On what evidence is indisputable experimental support that? The meteorologists and specialists in this field have not been reached to agree on the point during the International Meeting in Caracas. And now Benedict XVI, ex cathedra, expects to decide by this arrogance. It will soon turn to burning all those who do not agree entirely with the papal notion of a good and bad day?"

The Association of Victims of Global Warming: "How can we not see in this provocative statement an insult to all victims past, present and future of the vagaries of climate, floods, tsunami, drought? This acquiescence to the "day" shows clearly the complicity of the Church with these destructive phenomena which pretends to see the "providential" work of an avenging God, and punishment. And what is worse, this attitude will only encourage those that cause global warming, as will now be able to rely on the backing of the Vatican."

The World Council: "The pope pretends to forget that while the sun shines in Rome, part of the planet is plunged in darkness at night. Here's a sign of disrespect intolerable for vast portions of the world and a clear sign, if you still need proof, of the neocolonial eurocentrism of this German pope. "

The Directors of the American feminists Associations: "Because the pope wanted to say" what a fine day "using terms in which in the original sentence in Italian, is the masculine? Could very well have been using feminine gendered Italian words as "that 'beautiful' [bella] day", using an "inclusive" adjective because it does not decline to a different masculine or feminine. It 'clear that this Pope, who has already condemned the non-sexist formulae of baptism and blessings ( "In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier"), shows at every turn his commitment to the most retrograde principles. It is "discouraging that in 2009 he continues to poing backwards."

The League of Human Rights: "Such statements can only deeply hurt all the people who have a vision of reality different from that of the pope. We think in particular to people in hospital, immobile, or imprisoned, whose horizon does not stretch beyond four walls, and also to the victims of rare diseases whose conditions render them incapable of perceiving the state of the weather. Here, it is evident, the desire of discrimination between "good", would exclude all (at the expense of minorities, of Afro-Americans and any concept of 'inculturation'), and those who by choice or inability to perceive things differently. We propose a demonstration judicial complaints on grounds of discrimination against this pope."

Alberto Melloni, the School of Bologna: "We see clearly the profound difference between this pope, introverted and closed in himself and surpassed in his world, which is limited, compared with the father who "opened the Church to the world", Pope John XXIII who everyone wanted to bring their children to embrace the Pope, John XXIII with a programme coinciding with the impulse of the Spirit to reconcile, that recent popes have tried to suffocate."

Beppe Severgnini, a journalist: "The Pope is the Pope Punto. But one can not but think with a little 'homesickness' that John Paul II would have said the same words maybe in Romanesco (Roman dialect) And waving the white zucchetto to the faithful."

L'Osservatore Romano published a slightly different version of the exact words of the Pope, "He might have said, according to L'Osservatore R., "Some might say that it is nice weather". But the audio and video journalists have denied the softened version. Many also attacked the ingenuity of Fr. Lombardi who, despite being on the side of the Pope did not intervene to prevent that statement or just better clarify the meaning.

Remember, you read it here in English first.

Anatomy of Spin

A large part of what I do involves media analysis. I look at the ways the mainstream media (so called) presents the Church and her doctrines.

The last few weeks has been very interesting in that vein.

A cruise through the headlines makes for endless fun.

The Pope is dangerously wrong about condoms. This is because, you see, Condoms do not promote promiscuity, but because the Pope [is] Ignorant About AIDS, HIV numbers [are] at [a] record high (in New Zealand...because of course, he's banned them there too).

Now the world knows that John Paul II's condom ban worsened African AIDS crisis, (a stance that even followers disagree with).

This is because, naturally, the whole world, particularly in Africa, does everything the Pope says all the time. Cause, you know, the Pope rules the whole world. This means that the nice well-groomed men in London with HIV who want to bugger their sixteen year old boytoys would naturally never dream of using a condom now that the Pope has said they shouldn't.

Seriously, in Medialand, all this makes perfect sense.

"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”

Well well, religion according to journalism.

Pope Benedict XVI is calling for Catholics to fast during Lent as a way of opening their hearts to God and seeing how the poor live.

Fasting to "see how the poor live"...

ah yes. The Catholic teaching on fasting as seen through the pink-tinted lenses of secular journalism.

I suppose the early Fathers and Doctors also said I should also start loading up on microwavable pizza pops and frozen curries. Or perhaps, to develop solidarity with The Poor, I need to quit my job, go on welfare, have six children by seven different men and start getting a chip on my hard-done-by shoulder about how the government owes me rent money and a plasma screen TV.

Is it possible that there is something less...errr...political we might have heard from the Holy Father about the value of fasting? Something in a religious vein perhaps?

Could it be that he had some spiritual improvement in mind?

Since all of us are weighed down by sin and its consequences, fasting is proposed to us as an instrument to restore friendship with God. Such was the case with Ezra, who, in preparation for the journey from exile back to the Promised Land, calls upon the assembled people to fast so that “we might humble ourselves before our God” (8,21). The Almighty heard their prayer and assured them of His favor and protection. In the same way, the people of Nineveh, responding to Jonah’s call to repentance, proclaimed a fast, as a sign of their sincerity, saying: “Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we perish not?” . In this instance, too, God saw their works and spared them.
...

The Church Fathers, too, speak of the force of fasting to bridle sin, especially the lusts of the “old Adam,” and open in the heart of the believer a path to God...

...

The faithful practice of fasting contributes, moreover, to conferring unity to the whole person, body and soul, helping to avoid sin and grow in intimacy with the Lord. Saint Augustine, who knew all too well his own negative impulses, defining them as “twisted and tangled knottiness” (Confessions, II, 10.18), writes: “I will certainly impose privation, but it is so that he will forgive me, to be pleasing in his eyes, that I may enjoy his delightfulness” (Sermo 400, 3, 3: PL 40, 708).

Denying material food, which nourishes our body, nurtures an interior disposition to listen to Christ and be fed by His saving word.

No way

Really?!!

National Post lies then re-edits and misrepresents response to attack piece.

Ah, yes. Journalists, as Kathy says: "Our moral and intellectual superiors".

But of course, ANSA is completely free of bias in the matter

Her father has fought for more than a decade for a dignified end to his daughter's life and had great difficulties finding a clinic ready to do this despite a November supreme court ruling which was in his favor but which split Catholics and libertarians in the country.

Strictly the facts, right boys?

Nothing to see here...

Vatican finds U.S. seminaries in overall good health

Yes, everything's juuuuust fiiiiiine. Move along.

One wonders if any of these journalists actually read the document in question past the first three sentences.

Oh, wait.

Silly me.


As part of my ongoing attempts to become a better Catholic, I'm trying to learn to be helpful. So in the interests of helping the less fortunate, I offer an interpretation of Vaticanese for the benefit of above mentioned hard-of-thinking types out there looking to produce some copy.

The Final Report on the Vatican Visitation of US Seminaries, in essence, says the following:

Fire people more often

"In almost all the places, there are procedures fr removing a superior or teacher who fails in his or her duties. Nevertheless, in consideration of various problems in respect to doctrinal teaching, it appears that these procedures are not invoked as often as they should be."

By "the priesthood" we don't include a lot of New Age/feminist/egalitarian bull---- about 'the priesthood of the people' any more than we do about the "Magisterium of the laity". We mean the actual priesthood. You know, that guy who wears the polyester poncho in front of the big wooden table every Sunday... Got it?

Many seminaries are also involved in the theological education of the laity. Most institutes concerned try to separate the two study paths. Nevertheless, a clear distinction between the essential activity of the seminary - the formation of
candidates for the priesthood - and other peripheral activities - principally, the
theological formation of the laity - is sometimes made difficult either because of a lack of theological clarity about the distinction between the common priesthood and the ministerial priesthood, or else because of the high number of lay students frequenting the institute.

In a few seminaries, the clear distinction between the common priesthood and the ministerial, hierarchical priesthood needs to be emphasized more. Problems can also arise when the seminary aims at offering a theological education to all - seminarians and laity - for, unless proper safeguards are put in place, the seminary can lose much of its finality, which is to offer a specifically priestly [emphasis in the original. HW.] formation to men chosen by the Church to embark on the path to Holy Orders.

And, no, we are not soon going to change our minds about ordaining women, so you can stop dancing around the whole issue RIGHT NOW, and stop treating it as if it's "just a job that anyone can do".

It was also noted that, in some academic centers run by religious, there is a certain reticence, on the part of both students and teachers, to discuss the priestly ministry. Instead, there is a preference for discussing simply "ministry" - in the
broad sense, including also the various apostolates of the laity - in part, perhaps, as a mistaken attempt not to offend those who judge the reservation of the Sacrament of Orders to men alone as discriminatory.

In some institutes, however, one has the impression that the students, while not denying any point of doctrine on the priesthood, have an incomplete grasp of the full breadth of the Church's teaching in this area. The students have an idea of priestly service, but teachings such as on the character impressed by the Sacrament of Orders, on the nature of sacra potestns, on the tria munera, etc., are not so well known. This leads to a theologically poor, functionalistic image of the priesthood.