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	Spinning the Pope By Anthony Stevens-Arroyo On Faith April 22, 2008 http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/catholicamerica/2008/04/spinning_the_pope.html Television spins everything: so do newspapers and commentators. This basic fact of American life carried over to the just concluded papal visit of April 2008. I don't place myself over and above the crowd, but perhaps because subjectivity is so inescapable, it bears analysis. The spinners outside the faith wanted to make light of Pope Benedict XVI's visit by insisting that the pedophilia scandal loomed much larger than any Mass or (what they called) clich-ridden sermons. Even when the pontiff began his apologies while still on the plane, the pundits sneered that this was merely a tactic to avoid dealing directly with the issue. When Pope Benedict brought this matter up before the bishops and the laity over and over again, his sincerity was dismissed as inadequate because he refused to meet with abuse survivors: and then he did. But he didn't meet with all of them, I heard someone opine, as if such a meeting were logistically possible. Words are cheap, the pope has yet to take action, was the next response from the critics. Changes in canon law were then announced further demolishing the objections of the never-to-be-satisfied. About the only arrow left with which to attack Catholicism and the papacy on this score was the Johnny-One-Note claim that Cardinal Bernard Law had not been punished but was living in a Vatican palace. Sadly, that accusation rings false also: exile to splendor is a long-standing tradition in the Church going back to Renaissance times. Cardinal Law is, in a manner of speaking, locked up in the pope's Tower of London. The progressive Catholic faithful expected little from this Pontiff, given his previous reputation as the "Panzer Cardinal," who had done so much to censure innovative theologians in the past. Yet so far, there have been two uplifting encyclicals: one on Love and the other on Hope. His speech to the UN emphasized the need for the world community to protect human rights everywhere and for religious leaders to appeal to a common sense of truth rather than dogma as a basis for cooperation. Why the new gentleness? I suspect that twenty years ago John Paul II decided that he would play "good cop" and ordered then Cardinal Ratzinger to play "bad cop." Following orders may be to blame for making Benedict's bark worse than his bite. Now he is the pope and able to redefine himself. Progressives are still waiting for some papal statement to justify their low expectations and the papal visit prolonged that wait. The spinners from the tradition-bound Catholic conservatives were the most egregious of tall-tale tellers. The liturgical diversity in the Mass in Washington's stadium was dismissed as "multi-cultural exhibitionism." The case was made on EWTN that "all those emails" questioning the use of any language other than English only was a temporary concession to "pastoral care." Both opinions, of course, squarely placed themselves on the wrong side of history, because the vitality of Catholicism depends upon placing its universality ahead of its locality. The pope's call for immigration reform and his repeated renunciation of war in Iraq and Afghanistan were spun into tolerance for the Bush policies because the invading U.S. troops were defending human rights, an interpretation considerably beyond the reach of any serious understanding of the pope's statements. These conservatives were reduced to betting all their chips on a strong papal denunciation of those Catholic universities that in their opinion --were more interested in being universities than in being Catholic. They were disappointed when in his speech to the presidents of Catholic colleges and universities the former theology professor reaffirmed the primacy of free intellectual inquiry and academic freedom as protected by the faith. These spinners were left with nothing but the empty rejoinder that academic freedom was bound to truth as if only conservatives believed that! All in all, few spinners could make hay. This pope, while lacking the charisma of his predecessor, has proven himself capable of outsmarting those who like to dumb-down Church teaching.
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