{"id":3248,"date":"2007-03-13T08:52:47","date_gmt":"2007-03-13T15:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/03\/13\/pope-calls-opposition-to-death-penalty-not-negotiable-media-misses-it\/"},"modified":"2007-03-13T08:52:47","modified_gmt":"2007-03-13T15:52:47","slug":"pope-calls-opposition-to-death-penalty-not-negotiable-media-misses-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3248","title":{"rendered":"Pope Calls Opposition To Death Penalty "Not Negotiable"; Media Misses It"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Reuters<\/a>, under the headline “Catholic politicians must oppose gay marriage: Pope”:<\/p>\n

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Church’s opposition to gay marriage is “non-negotiable” and Catholic politicians have a moral duty to oppose it, as well as laws on abortion and euthanasia, Pope Benedict said in a document issued on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

In a 140-page booklet on the workings of a synod that took place at the Vatican in 2005 on the theme of the Eucharist, the 79-year-old German Pope also re-affirmed the Catholic rule of celibacy for priests.<\/p>\n

In the “Apostolic Exhortation” Benedict says all believers had to defend what he calls fundamental values but that the duty was “especially incumbent” for those in positions of power.<\/p>\n

He said these included “respect for human life, its defense from conception to natural death, the family built on marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one’s children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms.”<\/p>\n

“These values are not negotiable,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are hundreds of similar articles in the mainstream media today, mostly focusing on the Pope’s “not negotiable” opposition to same-sex marriage. ((Why are so many reporters using the phrase “non negotiable,” when the official text of the statement says “not negotiable”? It’s a mystery. Anyhow, here’s the relevant paragraph, quoted from the Vatican’s website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Here it is important to consider what the Synod Fathers described as eucharistic consistency, a quality which our lives are objectively called to embody. Worship pleasing to God can never be a purely private matter, without consequences for our relationships with others: it demands a public witness to our faith. Evidently, this is true for all the baptized, yet it is especially incumbent upon those who, by virtue of their social or political position, must make decisions regarding fundamental values, such as respect for human life, its defence from conception to natural death, the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one’s children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms (230). These values are not negotiable. Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce and support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature (231). There is an objective connection here with the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor 11:27-29). Bishops are bound to reaffirm constantly these values as part of their responsibility to the flock entrusted to them (232).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

)) I’ve also seen some mentioning his opposition to abortion, and one mentioning his opposition to divorce. But defending human life until “natural death” is pretty clearly an anti-death-penalty statement, and this too is (according to the Pope) “not negotiable.” Yet I’ve been searching in vain for a single news story pointing out that the Pope called opposition to the death penalty “not negotiable.”<\/p>\n

This confirms to a general rule the mainstream media follows: Events that highlight a split between Catholic teaching and liberal policies are news, and are reported on prominently. In contrast, events that highlight a split between Catholic teaching and conservative policies are not reported on at all.<\/p>\n

Then again, maybe the media silence is more truthful than the Pope’s statement. Despite what the Pope said, opposition to the death penalty is<\/em> negotiable. Has there been a single case of a Bishop refusing communion to a politician — or to local activists<\/a> — to object to their public support of the death penalty? Will the Church leadership criticize pro-death-penalty Catholic politicians with one-tenth the passion that they’ll devote to fighting same-sex marriage? Of course not. For the Pope — and for most right-wing Catholics — supporting discrimination against queers is much <\/em>more important than opposing the death penalty.<\/p>\n

There’s also a very notable omission from the Pope’s 140-page discussion; he doesn’t call on politicians to oppose torture, nor does he call for the Eurochrist<\/strike> Eucharist to be withheld from politicians who support torture, even though he must know that many prominent politicians have been pressing for laws to accommodate and support torture. In fact, Benedict didn’t mention torture at all. It’s not surprising that the Pope is such a moral coward when it comes to standing up to the right wing, but it is disappointing. ((Contrast Benedict’s silence on torture this week to the words of the Second Vatican Council:<\/p>\n

Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

))<\/p>\n

So maybe the media has it right after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Reuters, under the headline “Catholic politicians must oppose gay marriage: Pope”: VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Church’s opposition to gay marriage is “non-negotiable” and Catholic politicians have a moral duty to oppose it, as well as laws on abortion … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,54,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homophobic-zaninessmore-lgbtq-issues","category-media-criticism","category-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}