Guest Columnist

Blessings and curses going hand in hand with Catholic media

By Tom Sheridan

Catholic News Service

Catholic media enjoy many blessings but suffer from many curses. Catholic media share much with their secular brethren, competing for the same readers, for the same advertising dollar, for the same opportunity to make their point in the mass market. (That’s mass with a lowercase “m.”)

That’s one of the curses.

But unlike secular media, which often seem to exist to make noise and a profit, Catholic media exist to make a point and a difference. That’s a blessing. (OK, there’s “prophet,” too, though that’s probably stretching the pun.)

True, some secular publications don’t fit that mold, and some Catholic ones -- probably too many -- are judged more by their balance sheets than by their content. Still, the comparison is valid.

Like secular journalists, their Catholic counterparts get a kick out of what they do. When I labored at the Chicago Sun-Times, I enjoyed watching anonymously as fellow commuters paused over something I wrote. Later, as editor of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Catholic New World, I smiled when I saw a young woman on my bus pore over the current issue.

One big curse is that people often let secular media define the church.

Secular media can be a great ally to the church. However, they cannot always be counted on to understand faith, especially when being outrageous gains more notice than being truthful.

A few years ago, a Chicago daily reported -- on the front page no less -- that Cardinal Francis E. George “sanctified” and blessed a high-end car showroom. The article was correct. However, at best it came across as tongue-in-cheek; at worst it was snide.

No matter that there’s a grand tradition of blessing homes, people and even places of business. There are worse things than acknowledging the presence of God in everyday life.

The church ministers daily to the world’s hurts and pains. Its work among the poor, its efforts to keep inner-city schools open and its many calls for justice often go unnoted by the secular media.

But blessing a business -- even a generous business whose donations help support the church and its works -- that becomes Page One news?

Such dismissive reporting can diminish the church.

Without Catholic media, expecting Catholics to understand what’s happening in the church or what the church is saying is, frankly, foolish.

The clergy sex abuse crisis has also taken its toll on the church’s reputation. Yes, secular media took the lead in exposing, though sometimes sensationalizing, the problem. However, many Catholic publications did a credible job of reporting it, warts and all.

The church is working to repair its battered public face, though you’ll read about that more in church media than in secular. That, sadly, is often dismissed as “cheerleading.”

But Catholic media must be more than just cheerleaders; they must offer perspectives not available elsewhere.

Sometimes, though, that “church perspective” becomes yet another curse rather than the blessing it ought to be. Many Catholics aren’t pleased with church positions on war, poverty, immigration and even the death penalty. Others balk at the renewal of the Latin Mass and similar traditions, taking it out on the church’s media.

In his Jan. 24 message for World Communications Day (May 4), Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged that secular media’s “meteoric technical evolution” gives them the potential for more blessings and curses. He encouraged secular media to cease being proponents of manipulation and instead press for justice by espousing information based in truth.

The challenge for Catholic media is much the same, though one would think it at least has a head start. That, surely, is a blessing.

Here’s a comparison which might help explain the value of Catholic media, especially this month. The Wall Street Journal, that most secular of newspapers, once turned a slur from a Soviet leader into a slogan: “Capitalist tool.”

If the worst that can be said about Catholic media is that they are a “tool of faith,” I’ll take it.

And if you’re reading this in a Catholic publication, you deserve blessings, too.