A weekly column by Father George Rutler.
Pope Benedict XVI was in Lebanon last week where the
principal Catholic rite, the Maronite, traces its roots to Saint Maroun,
who in the fourth century was a friend of Saint John Chrysostom. The
Holy Father spoke to people who “know all too well the tragedy of
conflict and . . . the cry of the widow and the orphan.” Like Blessed
Teresa of Calcutta, the Pope linked violence to contempt for the right
to life: “The effectiveness of our commitment to peace depends on our
understanding of human life.” The defense of life “leads us to reject
not only war and terrorism, but every assault on innocent human life, on
men and women as creatures willed by God. Wherever the truth of human
nature is ignored or denied, it becomes impossible to respect that
grammar which is the natural law inscribed in the human heart.”
This contradicts those in our own country who plead for peace
while violating the innocent unborn. Our current President has defended
“partial-birth abortion” when (in arguing against the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002),
as he infelicitously put it, “. . . that fetus, or child, however you
want to describe it, is now outside of the mother’s womb . . .” It is
not surprising that The New York Times should be so opposed to
the Catholic Church whose teaching on the sanctity of life exposes the
hypocrisy of that publication. If, according to the adage, “hypocrisy is
the tribute which vice pays to virtue,” there is much vice promoted by The New York Times, but one is hard pressed to detect the remnant virtue.
Pope Benedict's final Mass in Lebanon attracted 350,000, yet the
largest gathering of faithful in the long history of that ancient land
was mentioned only on the bottom of page eight of The New York Times
with a tiny photograph. The same issue's “Quotation of the Day” was by
an “Egyptian religious scholar” Ismail Mohamed: “We don't think that
depictions of the prophets are freedom of expression; we think it is an
offense against our rights.” This is where hypocrisy burst into a
veritable tap dance, for in March of this year, the Times ran a full-page advertisement mocking the Catholic Church, and a few days later refused to run a similar one mocking Islam.
The “Grey Lady” is only a few shades removed from what our Lord
called “whitewashed tombs.” The mainstream media have defended vulgar
and even pornographic anti-Christian films, stage plays, sculptures and
painting as “art” entitled by free expression. When it comes to Islam,
there is a different standard. Perhaps it is because newspaper editors
know that Pope Benedict XVI will not demand that they be decapitated.
The Pope risked his life to go to the Middle East. At 85, he still
is on active duty. And so will his successors be, long after the last
subscriber to The New York Times has cancelled his subscription.
