Faith and the Media

Opening session address by Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic, Archbishop of Toronto





          Opening Address



There is almost an inevitable tension between Christian faith and the media which goes deeper than accurate or inaccurate reporting, important though accuracy or inaccuracy may be. The tension has to do with inbred priorities of the media and of the faith.

First, two brief introductory remarks. First of all, I should congratulate the organizers and the participants in this particular event. I feel it took a great deal of courage first of all to even think of it, and secondly to launch it, so my sincerest congratulations. My second remark concerns my presence at this event. When I was invited to participate, I had many other things to think about so I consented somewhat absentmindedly, and then when I did have time to think about it, I realized that I had bitten off more than I could chew and I was doing my best to get out of it but they wouldn't let me. My problem simply is that I have a whole lot of questions, I have a few suspicions, and practically no answers.

The first question may strike you as somewhat irrelevant and yet I think it's very relevant. The question concerns the failure of the Christian democratic parties in Europe to bring about with they were founded for, namely Christianization of social and political life. Their inspiration was Pope Leo XIII's social encyclical, Rerum Novarum, published about a hundred years ago, and it addressed the world of work, particularly industrial work, and pleaded with Catholics to bring about social justice. You may not be familiar with these parties but they are still very influential in Italy, in Austria, in Germany, to a degree in France, in Holland and Belgium. In many areas these parties were a great success. The kind of social legislation that they have enacted, particularly since the Second World War, but even before the Second World War, is magnificent. They were the force behind the European reconciliation and unification. But it would be difficult to claim that God is more fervently believed in in today's Europe than in that of a hundred years ago. Now the question arises, "why?" After all, these parties in many ways were quite successful. I'm sure that we could discuss this forever.

As an amateur historian --and the emphasis is on "amateur,"-- I have the right to utter a generalized suspicion. You see, the professional historians can't really generalize, or if they do they expose themselves to all sorts of criticism, but when you're an amateur historian, well, actually you can afford to do all sorts of things. So my generalized suspicion is that these political parties embraced too uncritically the models of the liberal democratic political action and stride.

Now, first of all, this is a suspicion. I want to emphasize that. And secondly, I'm not speaking of democracy as such because there is no such thing as democracy as such, but of liberal democracy, which is characteristic of our world since the time of enlightenment, the enlightenment of the 18th century, and the French revolution. The ideology of this particular democracy is philosophical liberalism, which takes the individual as the supreme norm. It's the individual person, his or her freedom, his needs, his desires, which are paramount. The individual decides for himself or herself what is true and good for him. The only limitation that is permitted is another individual's rights and desires. I feel that this often unspoken philosophical presupposition is built into the very marrow of our social political thinking and action, a presupposition which was swallowed, unconsciously to a degree, by the Christian democratic parties and then worked at cross-purposes with their declared roles and goals. And let me repeat, this is a suspicion, a question, more than an assertion.

Now, the second point, the modern media. The modern media, press first, radio later, television and Internet yet later, were the product of and growing along with a number of realities. One was obviously expanding literacy. There's no point in having a paper that nobody buys or nobody can read. Also, they were part and parcel of the spreading democracy and evermore widespread liberal ideology, liberalism as opposed to absolutism in politics, in economics and elsewhere. Liberalism tends to be anti-clerical--in fact, I think I could say anti-religious--partly because the church was linked with undemocratic political systems in the past but, I think more importantly, because of the church's claim to proclaim truth and demands which, coming from God, are absolute and do not originate with the individual's freedom.

Here I would like to quote from an extraordinary book, but then most of the things that Owen Chadwick writes are extraordinary. The title of the book is The Secularization of the European Mind of the 19th Century (Cambridge University Press, 1975). Talking about the press and the process of the secularization that is de-religionizing of the 19th century, he says:

The strength of the press was against, not for. Criticism, not construction . It was adapted to show the ills of society, less adapted to showing remedies. Its searchlight fastened upon the inadequacies of the church and helped the ecclesiastical reforms of the 19th century by exposing its abuses . It strengthened Whigs everywhere, even when it was Tory, because its genius , that is the genius of the press, lay in change and not in preservation.
I think that's a good description of the media even today.

Actually, Owen Chadwick points out that the press of the 19th century was both a pulpit and a growing power with built-in liberalist bias. I think that we can still claim that this remains largely true of the press and other media today. This bias, in a sense, remains no matter what its orientation happens to be.

Permit a comparison with advertising. Advertising is an extremely important element in our society today. We would not know how to live without it and it can be of great benefit. There's no doubt about it. But there is something built into advertising that is seldom adverted to, but it's taken for granted. That is the perpetual appeal to our likes and dislikes, to our real or imagined needs and urges. It appeals to our self-centredness as if the self-centredness were fully legitimate, needing no justification. And that is built into our advertising , and whatever else you say about it, it's there.

So I suspect, consequently, that there is almost an inevitable tension--I don't mean hostility, but tension--between Christian faith and the media. This is a suspicion, not a certainty. And this tension, I think, I suspect, I feel, goes deeper than accurate or inaccurate reporting, important though accuracy or inaccuracy may be. The tension has to do with inbred priorities of the media and of the faith.

I come to the third point. I wish to illustrate this tension between the media in general and the faith by referring to the messianic secret in the Gospel of Mark. So what does this messianic secret, the feature of the gospel of Mark, what does it talk about, what is it? Well, there are two things primarily--not only, but primarily--subsumed under this title.

One is Mark's insistence that Jesus was not to be publicly proclaimed as the Son of God until after His death on the cross. In other words, as far as Mark is concerned, there was an embargo on the proclamation of Jesus as the Son of God until after he died. In most gospel versions Jesus' baptism is the beginning of his public ministry, it's Jesus alone who hears the voice of God telling him that he is the Son of God. In the mathematical--and it's almost mathematical--middle of the gospel, there is the scene of transfiguration and there three privileged disciples, Peter, James and John, are allowed to hear the same proclamation that Jesus is the Son of God, but they are told to be quiet about it. It's only after Jesus' death on the cross that the Roman centurion proclaims him publicly to be the Son of God.

And the other feature that I want to mention in this connection of the gospel of Mark under the title of messianic secret is Jesus' continual insistence that his miracles be kept secret until after his resurrection from the dead. It's the same kind of thing. Jesus puts an embargo on the proclamation of his miracles. Now, obviously there's an evangelist's interest here. What's the evangelist trying to tell us? First, that Jesus' divine sonship consists primarily in his total dedication to and total oneness with the Father, in his complete obedience to the Father. It's on the cross, it's his death that is the final, total expression of Jesus' complete trust in the Father and complete readiness to hand himself over to the Father. And the miracles which Mark considers completely real will be read correctly only in the light of the cross. In other words, on condition that they be seen not as acts of an independent, self-advertising, self- serving individual's power, but as acts of someone who is totally dedicated to God and for whom his miracles are God's gracious deeds.

Now, what "hurts" the disciples and us when we read the gospel, if we take it seriously, is the consequence. The consequence is that as the Master, so the disciples. James and John want the first places in the kingdom. In reply to their request, Jesus refers obliquely to his own self-sacrificial death and their own self-sacrificial death. Here, for instance, I think it's good to mention that when we talk about freedom (and I don't think that the liberal freedom and the Christian freedom are irreconcilable; they are reconcilable yet the emphases are quite different) when we talk about freedom, we talk about freedom from our own self -centredness, from our own selfishness, so that I am free, that I am master of my own desires, my own urges, my own fears, my own ambitions, etc., so much so that I can obey God, so that I am free to obey God, that I am free to do the will of God.

The liberal freedom is quite different. The liberal freedom is the freedom from all external constraints, all the external limitations, so that I can spread my wings and do my own thing. This is probably said much too simply, but basically that is correct. I think that the Christian freedom and the, shall we say, liberal freedom, though not irreconcilable, are quite distinct . I would say that most of our media are not interested in Jesus' self-emptying death, at least not as applying to themselves. They would tend, furthermore, to see nothing wrong with James' and John's attempt at self-promotion and, of course, they love the sweating and weeping madonnas and similar religious kitsch. Again, I'm being unfair here but I think there's some truth to that. Though I am not suggesting that the gospel miracles are of the same order as our sweating madonnas, I suspect that our media, in Jesus' day, would break the embargo.

The fourth point is this: Sometimes we, the religious professonals--that is bishops and priests, etc.--are not much help to the media. I have to confess that. At times we're not very forthcoming with the information that the media seek. Some of our unwillingness, granted, is based on our fear of sensationalism. Sometimes we don't explain ourselves very well. But there are other difficulties. I think that sometimes we, the religious professionals, are guilty of more serious errors than reticence or failure to be clear. I do ask myself--and this may sound like an insult, but it's not--I do ask myself whether we do not kowtow to the media unduly. I ask myself whether those who come after us will not blame us for yielding to the power of the media too readily, accepting the power of the media too readily, just as we blame our predecessors for being too subservient to the powers that were common in their day.

Another question I have is this: Do we religious professionals, in our eagerness to get our message across, garble it by playing along with the mindset that is the thought categories and priorities of the media? Do we fail to call upon the media to analyze and question their own taken-for-granted presuppositions and mindsets?

And now I come to the last point, and here I'm speaking strictly as a bishop, of course, and a religious professional, if you wish. What am I pleading for with the media? First, not that they agree with us, but that they try to understand us and see things through the eyes of Christian believers. I am pleading for more than verbal accuracy. I am pleading, in fact, for some kind of empathy.

An example, if you wish, and it's taken from a long time ago. I clearly do not share the mythical world vision of the summarian Epic of Gilgamesh of the Third Millenium before Christ. I don't believe in those goddesses and gods that appeared there. But I can and I do emphathize with the authors' ceaseless and fruitless quest of immortality that is expressed in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The other plea, the media ought to know that their secularist--and it's predominantly secularist--mindset and view of the world is not the only one in existence in our world or in the past. There's another thing that they ought to know, but it's true of all of us. The most persuasive, the most permeating, the most influential element of our thought and stance are not those which we propogate consciously and intentionally, but those that are taken for granted, unquestioned, and tacitly assumed. I think that agnosticism, which is the faith of so many in our world, is actually spreading itself by taking itself for granted, not by propagating itself.

The third plea is not a plea but a dream. I would wish that every media person who writes, comments, reports or even entertains had a Masters degree or a Ph.D. degree or its equivalent in history. The reason? Experience suggests that the less history is known, the more ideology flourishes. In other words, we shall be helpless victims of the prevailing winds if we don't know history.

In conclusion, I am well aware of the power of the media and I am well aware of their importance for our simple democratic process. I think our democratic process, at least as we experience it, would be quite impossible without the media, and so many other things, of course. But dare I suggest to the media, the idea of noblesse oblige. In other words, you're in power, so behave like people in power.

Cardinal Ambrozic was ordained Auxiliary Bishop of Toronto on May 27, 1976. He was appointed Coadjutor Archbishop on May 22, 1986. He became Archbishop of Toronto on March 17, 1990. He was named Cardinal by Pope John Paul II on January 18, 1998 and invested on February 21, 1998. He has authored two books, many articles and writes a monthly column in The Catholic Register.

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Last modified: 29 October 1999

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