New Pope Coverage

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In the conservative blog "PJ Media," the author, Stephen Kruiser lambasts the mainstream media (MSM) for unfairly critiquing the election of a new pope. He accuses the MSM of trying to mold the church in its own liberal, Starbucks sipping, view of the world. The church, in his view, is an immutable institution "because the Church isn't whimsical or a slave to the social quirks of a given era." The media has accused the Church of being backwards on issues such as women's rights, including, but not limited to, abortion. They have also been seen as being averse to homosexuals and gay marriage. Kruiser sees no reason for the Church to yield to the pressure being put on it by the MSM as he sees it.

Kruiser is right in the sense that it seems implausible that the Church would change its stance on an issue it has held for 2000 years. But it's not just the media that's questioned the Roman Catholic Church. Church attendance across Europe and the United States has fallen steadily over the past 15 years. Gay marriage is garnering greater acceptance as well as contraception. Many religious values are giving way to secular ones. This is not just a trend in the media, but the developed world's society as well. So, given this phenomenon, why shouldn't the media ask these questions about the Church? The Church seems to be fighting a losing battle on polemic social issues, and the only way I see the Church surviving in the long term future is to ask itself this question: Can the Church continue to be relevant in a growing secular society when it embraces ideas that more and more people are rapidly rejecting?

I should not discount the changes on some limited levels that the Catholic Church, or at least some individual people at high positions, have undergone. Pope Francis does respect homosexuals as people, however, he does not go as far as to fully accept the concept of gay marriage. The Catholic Church is usually the last hold out to what society in general has accepted, whether it's the growing faith in science, prevalence of contraception, or anything.

Declining attendance, in my view, cannot be remedied. Science has provided us with irrevocable truths about the world that for thousands of years of human history have remained a mystery, explained by different supernatural myths. With science having taken off over the last couple hundred years or so, the need for the church has expectedly gone down. Humans have only known the structure of DNA, the essential building blocks of all living things, for about 60 years. Science does not know everything, but it has explained much more in a relatively short period of time than religion ever has. The best chance for church survival is to radically change its stance on virtually every social issue and hope it still attracts followers.

The MSM is not at fault for bringing up thoughtful questions. In fact, I think the only way for the Church to survive is to ask them amongst themselves. The Church has adapted before, however. Prior to the Copernican model of the solar system came to be broadly accepted, the Church excommunicated and condemned as heretics the proponents of such a model. They have since de-excommunicated Galileo and others who went against Church doctrine. The Church is in conflict with secular society, ignoring the conflict would be a sort of dereliction of duty by the media.

New Media at its Finest

The new media, consisting of blogs and various i-reports, can be said to have made getting news a more personalized experience than it once was. We can "Like" certain people or institutions on Facebook and receive instant, up to the minute news stories from them. We can also "Follow" our favorite celebrities on Twitter and feel like we are actually part of their lives. The advent of blogs has given the average Joe a greater voice than 15 years ago. Information is much more accesible to the common person around the world and is getting much more accesible every year as internet connection proliferates around the globe.

These are all the advantages of new media. Accessible. Quick. Empowering. There is one story from the blog Daily Kos (among others in their archives) that serve as an example of an apparent disadvantage that social media provides. Here it is: The NRA response to the State of the Union: Only the NRA cares about the children. It is not bad that the Daily Kos has an opinion on a polemic debate in the country, in fact, a blog that is slanted either to the liberal or conservative side is the writers' own prerogative and is not inherently a bad thing. However, a side effect of, in this case, the Daily Kos's liberal bubble is that it can promote incendiary, hyperbolic language that often utilizes straw man arguments to criticize the other side of an issue. Take the first sentence for example, "Official NRA crazy person Wayne LaPierre..." To me at least, much of the substantive credibility of this article is thrown out the window by the first sentence alone when such language is used. I am no fan of the NRA myself, but I get turned off by a title like this. Obviously, Daily Kos is a well known liberal blog and it is expected that they would have harsh words for the NRA, but the first line rubs me, and I suspect many others, the wrong way. It makes the article seem like it came from the Onion. Blogs can be used to advance an opinion that old media would refuse to, but that does not mean that one must compromise journalistic principles to achieve that end. Blogs provide people who would never before be able to propagate their thoughts a chance to do just that, but with expanding power, comes just as much responsibility. Bloggers have a duty to uphold at least a modicum of integrity when crafting their words. Unless someone is physically or mentally abusing someone, bloggers should treat their opinions with some respect, even though the bloggers are not regulated as tightly as the mainstream media.

This criticism is not just confined to Daily Kos. Partisan blogs all over the internet employ these tactics as bait to lure readers. This puts liberals and conservatives in their own spheres of reality. My criticism is not so much of the specific blogs, (their main goal, after all, is to attract the most readers to their blog) but rather the phenomenon of blogs itself. I think the blog Talking Points Memo does a great job of trying to remedy the ill effects that are the byproducts of partisan blogs. Their writing looks professional and has articulate and analytical bloggers covering the main stories. If blogging wants to be a credible news medium, at least in my eyes, than it needs to stop painting partisans into corners.