Editor’s Note

Jan 14, 2022

By Patricia Pereira
Context is everything – especially in speeches and news reports – and how a message is understood and conveyed, is equally important. How many times have we heard our local politicians lamenting how they have been misquoted by the press. At the same time, some of the secular media are notorious for picking on a certain phrase, word or portions of a speech and spinning it out of context, because … sensationalism sells!

During his first general audience of 2022, Pope Francis gave a lovely catechesis on St Joseph and adoption. You may have missed it because the Holy Father also made an off-the-cuff comment about how some couples sadly choose to have “dogs and cats take the place of children” in their homes.

Of course the Holy Father probably assumed that people knew him well enough and would have understood the actual context of his words. Well, they didn’t … especially when the media chose to focus on that aspect of his catechesis. What garnered huge publicity instead was ‘Pope Francis’ view on couples having pampered pets instead of children’.

Opinion piece after opinion piece appeared in almost every prominent news outlet and everyone seemed to have a comment to make on how the Pope apparently hates pets.

Pope Francis’ words on adoption was the key message that should have been picked up by the media. It was this message of love and hope and generosity that should have been amplified and underscored. But as I mentioned earlier, it is sensationalism that sells, more so when it concerns prominent figures.

Today, more and more Catholics are drawing most of their information about the Church from secular sources. In a culture where media elite is increasingly secularised, if not explicitly hostile to religious values and teachings, this means that most Catholics are getting news about their own Church from sources that are unlikely to be sympathetic to, or even knowledgeable about, Catholic concerns. Whether Catholics in general are knowledgeable enough in their faith to recognise such bias remains an open question.

During a Catholic Media Survey initiated by the Catholic Research Centre and HERALD in 2020, which was aimed at planning the future direction of the newspaper, among the feedback received was a preference for ‘negative’ content to be removed.

The reality is that the Church today faces an environment that is, at best, unsympathetic and, at times hostile. In many parts of the world, the Church is regarded as an immigrant Church and has to deal with racial, ethnic and religious prejudice, as evident in the ongoing persecutions taking place against Christians. As negative or disheartening as the news may sound, we need to be aware of the harsh realities surrounding us as Church, as Christians.

Italian Archbishop Claudio Maria Cell, who is the former president of the Pontifical Council for Communications, once said, “The Church is not well served by those who often, out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, try to deny the existence of tensions and problems in a manner that ultimately may damage the credibility of the Church.”

Catholic journalism is both a vocation and profession. A profession with its own high standards of balance in reporting as well as charity in how the truth should be expressed. There is an obvious need for a trustworthy and informed Catholic voice, and the HERALD aims to be that voice.