Steve Soukup of the Culture of Life blog sounds the siren call for denial of reality when it comes to serious blunders by the Pope. He repeats the tired yarn of "blame it on the big bad media for misquoting the Pope". No. Perhaps we might have ascribed credibility to that excuse early on in the papacy, but admittedly this spiel is getting rather old and worn. Two years have gone by. That should have been plenty of time for the Vatican press office to take control of the pope's messages to present them to the media. After all, the mainstream media was no more friendly to Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI than they are to Pope Francis.
The previous pontiffs did take some precautions. Rarely, if ever, did they do extemporaneous interviews. They knew that the media would indeed make mincemeat out of their words. Incredibly this pope engages in these interviews quite frequently. He cannot claim ignorance regarding any potential misquote, given the fiascoes that have already occurred. Therefore we must conclude that either: 1) he doesn't care about the damage caused by the media or 2) he actually desires the confusion.
I don't know how Soukup gets the erroneous impression that we rely upon mainstream media for our information. There is so much "first-hand" data from which to learn. For instance, to learn just what poison was foisted upon us last October in the interim relatio from the sin-nod, we need only look at the report that is posted on the Vatican's own website. And then there are video clips of the pope himself prounouncing horrible stuff that might well veer into heresy - such as the one below that smacks of the heresy of indifferentism (with that same stench being acknowledged by the pope!). Both Creative Minority Report and Harvesting the Fruit have commentary. Soukup et al can rail all they want against those of us who call a spade a spade, but that won't change the nature of the truth that daily slaps us in the face.
Keep this man away from cameras, microphones, planes or anything that moves. This is just tiring.
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