Journalists Baffled by Commutative Property
For about thirty seconds last week I had the idea of keeping a
count of all the news stories about John Paul II which included
some variant of the motif that he was “liberal” (a
good thing) on many broad political issues but
“conservative” (a bad thing) on questions of sexual
and medical ethics. Thirty seconds was about the length of time
it took me to realize that this was a project that would have me
either throwing newspapers or remote controls across the room,
depending on the medium in which I encountered the story.
It sometimes seemed that most of the journalists of the world
had more or less simultaneously uttered a great cry of “We
don’t get it!” They seemed genuinely baffled, as if
they were trying to come to grips with stories of Hitler being
kind to children: how could anyone oppose both war and abortion?
It’s so very very strange, they seem to be thinking,
brows furrowed thoughtfully. But to anyone who understands the
teachings of the Catholic Church—and for that matter anyone
who has mastered a simple concept like the prohibition against
taking innocent life—the more baffling thing is the
obtuseness of the journalists.
It’s as if they are schoolchildren listening to the
teacher explain that 2 + 2 = 4. They seem to understand, but then
the teacher writes 4 = 2 + 2, bewilderment sweeps the room, and
the cry of “We don’t get it!” goes up. The
possibility that the ethical judgments which seem to them so
inconsistent are straightforward inferences from a single set of
principles never seems to occur to them at all.
Almost as frustrating to the Catholic observer is hearing such
fundamental moral doctrines as the prohibition of abortion
referred to as “policies” of this pope. Utterly
ignorant (it appears) of the institution, its history, and its
teachings, they seem to have the idea that a pope can (and does)
simply compose Church doctrine the way a pundit composes an op-ed
column—or the way some Supreme Court justices apparently
compose their decisions—and that therefore all that is
needed for doctrine to change in the ways they, the journalists,
would prefer, is for a new pope with progressive ideas to be
elected. Just as Congress might decide one day to nationalize the
health care system, so a pope could simply declare that abortion
is just fine, or that the doctrine of the Trinity is no longer
credible, and millions of Catholics would, overnight, cease
to believe A and begin to believe not-A.
Looked at that way, I suppose it’s no wonder that some
anti-Catholics deride us for being mindless puppets of the
Vatican. Without the foundational idea that our fundamental
beliefs describe facts about the nature of reality, and
that the rulers of the Church are as bound by these facts as I
am, it would appear that we have simply ceded our natural liberty
and personal responsibility to someone else, and for some
irrational and superstitious reason.
It’s probably not unfair to suspect that the whole idea
of principles is now alien to many or most of our fellow
countrymen—“principles,” that is, in the sense
of plain, fundamental, immutable, and inviolable axioms. These
have been replaced by attitudes: you shouldn’t hurt people;
you don’t have any right to tell other people what to do or
to judge what they do; my autonomy is inviolable; my opinion is
as good as anybody’s; it all depends on the circumstances,
and so forth.
When someone whose sense of right and wrong is governed by
such attitudes encounters a person like the pope, he is likely to
be very puzzled (we don’t get it!), and also to be
either infuriated or attracted. I thought I saw some signs among
a few TV journalists that the latter might be happening. I single
them out, in opposition to print journalists, because some of
them, especially the younger ones, seem, in their superficiality,
a bit less ideologically committed and thus more open. The New
York Times, in contrast, seems to be growing ever more rigid in
its anti-Catholicism and has, from what I’ve seen reported
in other media, distinguished itself for condescending nastiness,
using its first commentary on the pope’s death as an
occasion to get in a few extra jabs at those of us who thought
there was something wrong with starving Terri Schiavo to death
(the article seems not to be online anymore but you can find the
relevant paragraph
here
)
In spite of my natural pessimism I have been made hopeful over
the past couple of weeks by the power of the Church’s
witness to touch those who have not hardened themselves against
it. And I understand, again, part of the reason why John Paul II
was always hopeful about youth. The baby boomers who are in
charge of the mainstream media clearly don’t get it. I hope
it wasn’t my imagination that made me think the younger
generation may be another story.