LifeSiteNews Calls Kettle Black

LifeSiteNews.Com, best known for reporting pro-life issues, has just performed a disservice to both the Catholic community and the newsreading community in general.

At the heart of this disservice is THIS STORY ON THEIR WEB SITE.

Here’s are a couple of important excerpts whose significance I’ll elaborate on:

[In February 2003] the English press throughout the world falsely proclaimed that Pope John Paul II approved of Harry Potter. . . .

[A] Vatican prelate who quipped about Potter during a press briefing . . . led to the false press about the Vatican support of Potter.  At a Vatican press conference to present a study document on the New Age in April 2003, one of the presenters – Fr. Peter Fleedwood – made a positive comment on the Harry Potter books in response to a question from a reporter.    Headlines such as "Pope Approves Potter" (Toronto Star), "Pope Sticks Up for Potter Books" (BBC), "Harry Potter Is Ok With The Pontiff" (Chicago Sun Times) and "Vatican: Harry Potter’s OK with us" (CNN Asia) littered the mainstream media.

I remember this event. I gnashed my teeth during it at the stupidity of the press. The fact is, most reporters and editors are so UTTERLY CLUELESS about how the Church works that they can take some offhanded comment by a priest in a press conference and report it as an official declaration by the pope. What a bunch of individuals too ignorant to hold their own jobs!

LifeSiteNews.Com obviously was upset about it, too, as the two extracts from their current (2005) story illustrate.

But y’know what?

I also resent it when a group that is aware of this tendency of the press decides to EXPLOIT it and PLAYS THEM FOR SUCKERS.

That’s exactly what LifeSite has done.

Specifically: They have taken two brief instances of a person who was not the pope but who works at the Vatican and was speaking in a private capacity and presented them to the press in a way that they either knew or should have reasonably foreseen as causing the press to misrepresent these as official papal statements.

Thus one of the headlines on the Drudge Report was

POPE CRITICIZES HARRY POTTER . . .

But it doesn’t stop with secular sites getting the headline wrong. LifeSite ITSELF is running a story with the gravely misleading headline

POPE BENEDICT OPPOSES HARRY POTTER NOVELS

Now, before we go any further, let me issue THE BIG RED DISCLAIMER: I am not a fan of the Harry Potter novels. In order to be able to comment apologetically on the Harry Potter phenomenon, I read the first novel and watched the first two movies. I was not at all impressed with them as literature, and I recognize that they can have a harmful spiritual effect on some readers, especially among the young. I also recognize that they are not an apologia for paganism and that a reader who is secure in his faith will not be magically turned into a neo-pagan by reading them.

Having said that, what’s problematic about LifeSite’s headline–and its story in general?

Let us count the ways . . .

  1. As anybody in the news business should know (like the people at LifeSiteNews), the headline of a story is crucial. It can’t misrepresent the content of the story or the facts behind it. Yet that is precisely what this headline does.
  2. The headline is all the more crucial in the news business because it frames the way folks read the story and because many people read the headline who never go on to read the story. The only impression they have of it is the one generated by the headline.
  3. To any reader of normal intelligence the above headline would convey the impression that Pope Benedict has said something official that is in opposition to the Harry Potter novels. Individuals reading news stories commonly assume that when the pope is reported as doing something that he has just done it (hence: "news") and that he has done it in an official capacity (hence: "pope").
  4. In this case, Pope Benedict has said absolutely nothing about Harry Potter.
  5. What the stories is based on is a pair of extremely short letters written by Cardinal Ratzinger. We therefore have a problem with LifeSite misrepresenting, in its headline, comments by a cardinal as comments by the pope. The fact that this cardinal later became pope is irrelevant. Cardinals have a liberty to say things that popes do not, and you cannot go rummaging around in things a cardinal said years before becoming pope and represent them in a fashion that will lead the casual reader to suppose that they are things that he has endorsed as pope.
  6. Further, the two letters were not from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They were private correspondence from Cardinal Ratzinger. We therefore have a problem, again on the headline level, with representing personal opinion in a way that would lead the reader to think of it as official.
  7. Further, the two letters were written more than two years ago. We therefore have a problem with representing old material as if it were new. Note the tenses in the headline: "Pope Benedict opposes [present tense] Harry Potter." Uh-uh. Cardinal Ratzinger two years ago said things that sounded anti-Potter, but people can, y’know, change their minds on subjects, particularly as they learn more about them. You can’t take a statement someone made two years ago and represent it as indicative of present opposition when, in fact, there has been NO present opposition.

Even granting that their interpretation of Cardinal Ratzinger’s remarks was accurate (a point I will deal with later), what we have here is a case of LifeSiteNews taking (1) an unofficial statement (2) of personal opinion (3) by a man who worked at the Vatican and portraying it in a way (including, in this case, headlines on their own web site) in which (4) a casual reader would conclude that it was an official statement of the pope.

SAME EXACT THING THEY FAULTED THE WORLD MEDIA FOR DOING BACK IN 2003.

Colloquially, that’s referred to as the pot calling the kettle black.

Technically, that’s referred to as hypocrisy.

Only this time, what happened can’t be chalked up simply to the cluelessness of the world media. LifeSiteNews exploited that cluelessness. They played the press for suckers in order to generate the kind of press coverage they wanted. That’s a special kind of hypocrisy.

Now, having said all this, what should the faithful make of the contents of the two private Ratzinger letters?

See my forthcoming post on that subject.

Back In The Black

What’s the Vatican’s annual budget?

In the last annum it was 202,581,446 euros, which is about 242 million dollars. That’s good, because total income was 205,663,266 euros (246 million dollars), which means that they were 4 million dollars in the black (after several years of being in the red).

While the Holy See has a lot of non-monetary assets (buildings, for example), its actual budget is fairly small. For example, back in 2002 the budget for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was $600 million dollars (SOURCE). Put another way, the Vatican’s 2004 budget was only the size of 35 Catholic Answerses.

Where does the money go?

"A large part of the expenditure," said Cardinal Sebastiani, "is made up of the expenses of dicasteries and organizations of the Roman Curia which assist, each in its own way, the Roman Pontiff in his pastoral service to the Universal Church and to the particular Churches. … A total of 2,663 people work in the Roman Curia, of whom 759 are ecclesiastics, 346 religious and 1,558 lay people. Pensioners number 1,429."

GET THE STORY.

Didgeri – Do's and Don'ts

In a move that is sure to bring consternation to accomplished didgeridoo players the world over, Reuters has revealed the secret to getting the most from the enigmatic instrument.

It seems it’s all in the glottis, that little flap of skin at the back of the throat. According to a group of Australian scientists:

"We conclude that a major difference between a novice and an experienced player is a learned, but usually subconscious ability to

reduce the glottal opening…"

And all this time I thought it was all in the uvula! Ah, well… now I can take my trusty old didgeridoo out of mothballs and play my children to sleep as I have always dreamed of doing.

THE "SECRET" REVEALED!

JIMMY ADDS: Hmmmm. . . . As a result of practicing Semitic languages like Arabic, where glottal stops are considered a consonant, I’ve been practicing closing my glottis on command rather a lot. . . . Maybe I should take up the digeridoo.

Didgeri – Do’s and Don’ts

Didgeridoo_1In a move that is sure to bring consternation to accomplished didgeridoo players the world over, Reuters has revealed the secret to getting the most from the enigmatic instrument.

It seems it’s all in the glottis, that little flap of skin at the back of the throat. According to a group of Australian scientists:

"We conclude that a major difference between a novice and an experienced player is a learned, but usually subconscious ability to
reduce the glottal opening…"

And all this time I thought it was all in the uvula! Ah, well… now I can take my trusty old didgeridoo out of mothballs and play my children to sleep as I have always dreamed of doing.

THE "SECRET" REVEALED!

JIMMY ADDS: Hmmmm. . . . As a result of practicing Semitic languages like Arabic, where glottal stops are considered a consonant, I’ve been practicing closing my glottis on command rather a lot. . . . Maybe I should take up the digeridoo.

Diet Soda Dilemma

I think I’ll pretend I didn’t see the following story until another group of experts announces that the exact opposite is true:

"People who drink diet soft drinks don’t lose weight. In fact, they gain weight, a new study shows.

"The findings come from eight years of data collected by Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio. Fowler reported the data at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in San Diego.

"’What didn’t surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity,’ Fowler tells WebMD. ‘What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher.’"

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to the friend who sent me the link.)

Of course, this kind of thing is probably why the diet-soft-drink industry chooses advertising slogans such as "Just for the taste of it."

JIMMY ADDS: Actually, there are a couple of theories I’m aware of that may explain this. The first is that most folks who drink diet cokes think that they are saving more calories than they actually are and thus give themselves liberty for too much extra calorie intake, resulting in more net calories (e.g., "I didn’t drink that 180 calorie glass of Coke–I had Diet Coke instead–so it’s okay if I eat this 300 calorie piece of cake").

Another theory that may play a role is that most artificial sweeteners still have a very high glycemic index–higher even than sugar–and this may result in your brain thinking that you’ve just drunk a whole mess of sugar. The brain then gets ready to digest sugar and causes the insulin spike that inhibits weight loss.

My own conjecture is that the former conjecture may play a larger role than the latter. I lost a great deal of weight over a long period of time while drinking diet coke the whole time. The diff was that I had cut out almost all carbohydrates out of my diet and so wasn’t giving my body much to generate an insulin spike, even if the Nutrasweet in the diet coke was giving me a bit of one.

Ghosts?

A reader writes:

Gallup reports today that 42% of liberals believe in ghosts – but only 25% of conservatives.

As G. K. Chesterton said, "When people stop believing in God, they do not believe in nothing. They believe everything."

First,

GET THE STORY.

Second, I’m not so sure that one should so quickly dismiss this subject. While there are, no doubt, many liberals who are attracted to the ghost hypothesis on account of New Age beliefs, consider the following:

  • "Ghost" is simply the German-derived equivalent of the Latin-derived word "Spirit." That’s why the Holy Spirit is sometimes referred to as the Holy Ghost. Originally in English "ghost" and "spirit" referred to the same thing. Indeed, in German the word for "spirit" is still "geist." Rather than get hung up on semantics, we may wish to analyze claims about ghosts in terms of what we know about spirits.
  • First, spirits exist. This is a truth of the faith.
  • Second, spirits can sometimes manifest themselves to those in this life, as in the apparitions of the saints.
  • Third, there are even reports in Catholic history that spirits in purgatory have–by God’s will–occasionally manifested themselves to those on earth. In these cases, those on earth may see the spirits experiencing their purgation in some way.
  • Therefore, if these reports are true, God may at times allow spirits to manifest to those on earth in a way that might lead folks to describe them as "ghosts."

Now, I’m not saying that this actually happens. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t quickly scoff at the idea. It certainly has a place in Catholic tradition (lower "t" tradition). I know that folks today often repeat the mantra "There’s no such things as ghosts," but it seems to me that this may have more with the influence of a secular/scientistic worldview than anything else. I see no theological reason to say that God doesn’t allow this to happen on occasion. (On the other hand, I see no theological reason that compels us to the conclusion that he does, either.)

One note on the possibility of ghosts: Sometimes folks think of ghosts (or some ghosts) as malevolent. I don’t see how that would be possible on the above account. Souls experiencing purgatory might seem strage or disquieting to individuals in this life and might appear malevolent, but they would not be. I don’t see any evidence, though, that genuinely malevolent souls–i.e., the souls of the damned–could manifest on earth. Thus any genuinely malevolent ghosts would more likely represent demonic activity as far as I can tell.

These two phenomena–the "purgatory ghosts" and demons–also might explain so-called haunted houses and poltergeists ("noisy ghosts" in German).

Peeking At Potter

Hpbritcover_1 Did you know that the latest installment in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince is on store shelves already?  Fourteen people managed to snag copies of The Half-Blood Prince before a Canadian store realized its mistake in selling before the July 16 release date and pulled the copies.

You’d think that this wouldn’t be an earth-shattering event.  After all, I’ve seen books sold in bookstores before their release date all the time.  It’s not kosher, but it’s routinely done.  Only if you’re a publishing industry superstar do you rate an iron-clad "no sale" prior to the official date.  When you’re J. K. Rowling, you rate a Canadian judge ordering the fourteen early-buyers to keep their mouths shut about the book’s contents:

"A handful of people in Canada got a sneak peak of the latest Harry Potter book, but a British Columbia Supreme Court judge ordered them to keep it a secret.

"The book was sold to 14 people who snagged a copy of J. K. Rowlings’ much anticipated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when it landed on shelves last Thursday at a local grocery store.

"The book, officially set for release this coming Saturday, has been shrouded in secrecy and its debut has been highly orchestrated to enable everyone — readers, reviewers, even publishers — to crack it open all at once. It’s the sixth in Rowling’s seven-book fantasy series on the young wizard.

"But the store slipped up and sold 14 copies before realizing its mistake."

GET THE STORY.

The individuals involved should be grateful that all that happened was that they were legally gagged by a Muggle judge.  A Wizard court would probably have made them drink one of Snape’s potions.