The Church Resources Ltd board, the current publisher of CathNews, recently made this decision.

The move follows the closure of NZ Catholic in June and the promise of a new publication.

Forward looking - a new chapter

This change marks a new chapter for CathNews, which has played a unique role in delivering news, analysis, and commentary of interest to the Catholic Church community.

The decision also aligns with broader changes within the Catholic media landscape in New Zealand.

The NZCBC's request to take over CathNews was the fourth received by the publication.

The announcement comes as CathNews reports impressive readership statistics: 4,490,401 articles were read between December 1, 2023, and November 30, 2024.

However, while transferring the asset, NZCBC Executive Officer Damian Dempsey confirmed that the Bishops Conference did not require the current CathNews writers. This left Church Resources Chair Fr Kevin Conroy SM with the difficult task of informing the lay staff that they would lose their jobs just before Christmas.

Thanks to writers, contributors and readers

For quite some time, CathNews has been shaped by the dedication of its writers, Juliet, Ronan, and behind the scenes, Gerard, who for some time were instrumental in producing CathNews twice weekly.

These people brought diverse life experiences and talents to the publication, often supporting each other to ensure continuity.

The team worked from various points within New Zealand, Australia, multiple parts of Asia, several European countries, and the US. CathNews never missed a publication, even during COVID.

Earlier, Pat McCarthy and Michael Otto also played significant roles as writers.

It is essential to say that just because they wrote about a topic from a particular perspective does not mean they wrote personally. They were doing their job.

Fr Denis O'Hagan SM also played a critical role in CathNews, helping establish its credibility and serving as its first editor. Denis had a particular interest in the gospel in broader society, and his passing earlier this year was a significant loss to the publication and its readers.

Several contributors, including Dr Joe Grayland, Professor Thomas O'Loughlin, Dr Phyllis Zagano, Joy Cowley, and occasionally Dr Christopher Longhurst, enriched CathNews with their experience and significant insightful commentary on the Church and society.

However, the unsung heroes of CathNews are its readers and those who have told their friends about it.

CathNews was compiled and managed on the 'charge of a regularly near empty rechargeable battery'. It was never advertised, so its growth was primarily by word of mouth.

Therefore, a thank you to the readers who enjoyed the publication sufficiently to promote it.

Others to thank are numerous people who offered comments and substantiated stories.

New Zealand is a small place where everyone knows our name, so most of these CathNews commentators wished to remain anonymous and changed their names and, occasionally, even their gender!

Regardless of name or gender, these real people with real perspectives gave gravitas to stories. Thank you.

There may still be a lesson in Denis O'Hagan's only opinion piece for CathNews, which we are re-publishing again today.

One distinct difference between publishing a newspaper and publishing online is the feedback statistics provide. CathNews heard you.

An occasional look at the list of countries where CathNews was read shows the reach of interest and the opportunity this medium presents, so a particular 'shout-out' to international readers recommending this New Zealand service to their friends, particularly in Australia and the United States.

Another highlight was the forward thinking of some priests who included seamlessly selected news in their parish newsletters.

Interestingly, on one occasion, the seamless syndication was promptly terminated when the priest shifted, and the communication role was transferred to a layperson.

CathNews enjoyed the support of a major sponsor. Without its significant backing and encouragement, CathNews would never have happened. On behalf of the readers, a sincere thank you. The sponsor always likes prayers.

CathNews was never Catholic News

While some referred to CathNews as "Catholic News," it never aimed to fit this mould. Instead, CathNews provided news and analysis of interest to the Catholic Church while addressing broader societal concerns, including AI, child poverty, housing, and modern technology.

A parish priest more than once suggested that CathNews only report on Catholic-specific issues and avoid controversial topics.

For those with similar views, we recommend reflecting on paragraph one of Gaudium et Spes.

CathNews was never limited to "news from inside a walled garden" but explored issues relevant to the Church in the modern world.

However, some critics felt CathNews was too liberal, not loyal, did not go far enough, or was not spiritual enough.

The publication carved a niche by maintaining editorial independence. Its mission was to inform and promote thoughtful reflection, and as such, it served as a possible seedbed for prayer.

To reference Pope Francis, there's room for 'everyone'.

Readers must opt-in to get the new CathNews

In January 2026, under NZCBC management, CathNews will undergo editorial changes.

While some readers may embrace the shift, others may not.

Following CathNews's privacy policy, existing readers must opt-in to receive the new version.

Opting out is not sufficient.

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Flashes of Insight

As CathNews transitions, a small global initiative, Flashes of Insight, is in its planning stages.

It will target forward-thinking readers.

A weekly publication will offer concise reflections and in-depth commentary on critical issues. Details about how to subscribe will be announced soon.

Flashes of Insight will remain free.

Today's edition

Today's edition of CathNews is a little different. In effect it's virtual fish n chip paper, it's yesterday's news.

The stories on today's page are a range of popularly read stories that cover an range of topics that CathNews have covered over the past thirteen years.

It's forged in part by the Vatican's own official communications channels, but even more so by outside commentators and media platforms heavily invested in selling a given pope's story to the world.

Throughout his papacy, John Paul II enjoyed a wide network of friendly commentators and analysts, forever prepared to interpret the pope in the best possible light.

Benedict XVI had his own support system, though smaller and quieter by comparison.

The fact that Francis has such a coterie - not the same people, obviously, but doing much the same thing - has been made abundantly clear in the last 24 hours or so.

It is clear vis-à-vis news reports that he used a crude slang term in referring to homosexuals in a May 20 session with Italian bishops.

Ironically, it's possible that in this case, the pope's mediatic Praetorian Guard actually may be misrepresenting the pontiff in order to save him, but more on that in a moment.

Private meeting

To set the scene, on May 20 Pope Francis was in the Vatican's synod hall in order to address the spring plenary assembly of the Italian Episcopal Conference (known by the acronym CEI).

There were roughly 230 bishops in the room, along with other clergy and supporting staff, meaning this wasn't just a casual chat among a handful of friends.

Technically, Francis's remarks to CEI are considered private, meaning the Vatican doesn't release an official transcript.

Yet with that many people in the room - some of whom, by the way, have awfully cosy relationships with reporters - it's generally foreordained that whatever the pope says will get out.

Certainly, the media-savvy Francis would have understood that whatever he said in that space was unlikely to stay there.

The gossips say

One of the topics that arose at the meting was the question of the admission of homosexual men to Catholic seminaries. Soon afterwards, rumors began to circulate.

It was said that Francis had used an off-colour term in the context of the discussion, saying there's already too much frociaggine in seminaries, which translates roughly to "faggotry."

The root term in Italian is frocio, the most widely used pejorative term in Italian for a gay man, the etymology of which has been lost in time.

(One theory traces it back to the 1527 sack of Rome, when feroci, or "ferocious", invading troops supposedly raped men and women indistinctly, but nobody really knows.)

The suffix -aggine denotes a quality or characteristic; for instance, Italians take the word stupido (which means what you think) and turn it into stupidaggini to convey acts of stupidity, i.e., "nonsense."

A matter of language

The rumour that Francis used the word was first made public by the Italian blog Dagospia, which is more or less the country's equivalent of the Drudge Report,

It was then picked up by mainstream media, first in Italy and then around the world.

In presenting the news, a striking share of media outlets have done so in ways seemingly intended to take the pope off the hook.

They note high up in their coverage that Italian is not his mother tongue and suggest he may not have understood that the term in question is offensive.

One prominent Italian newspaper, for example, pointed out that growing up in Argentina, the future pope spoke the Piedmont dialect rather than today's standard Italian.

It quoted unnamed bishops present at the time who said "it was obvious Francis was not aware of how much in our language the word is weighty and offensive."

Many media outlets also suggested the pope must not have known what he was saying, given his reputation as the pope of "Who am I to judge?"

Francis has built a reputation for being LGBTQ+-friendly, so the coverage holds, meaning that he must have used the term almost accidentally, without intending to shock or offend.

What should be made of these interpretations? Read more

• John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux, specialising in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Those who publish this information claim to be telling us what is happening in the world, but in our wiser moments we remember to question whether they are offering us the truth.

From experience, we know that the loudest voices belong to persons and institutions whose enormous wealth lets them fill the pages of newspapers, or radio and television channels.

Their stories enhance their own image and increase their profits.

Truth and lies

The daily news may give us the basic facts about a plane crash or a court trial, but when it comes to the truth about why a war is being fought, or about global warming, we need to be more cautious.

In fact we can identify several areas where the mainstream media in our "western" nations consistently distort the truth about our world.

Lie number one

One basic lie which is quietly promoted is that "White" people are of more value - are more important - than "people of colour".

More column-space and air-time is given to the death of a few "White" people than the death of hundreds or even thousands of Blacks, Asians or Palestinians.

Refugees from those populations are seen as a problem, usually treated callously.

They're not usually treated as the victims of wars provoked by our "White" nations, or of famines resulting from the global warming caused by centuries of our industrial activity.

We assume that we have a right to plunder "Third World" resources, as we earlier took the land of non-Whites.

We even justify that theft, whether it happened in North America during colonisation, across Australia after 1788, in Africa during the 19th century, or in Palestine since 1948.

In the latter case, mainstream media mostly ignore or conceal the genocide which now is completing that land theft, and demonises those - such as tertiary students - who dare protest against it.

Lie number two

Another fundamental untruth almost completely overlooked is that the "growth" of every nation's GDP cannot continue.

This is because every resource on earth - fresh water, iron, oil, gas, forests; even our capacity to capture sunlight - is limited.

Although some resources - coal - are more abundant than others, our civilisation will not survive unless we change to a world economy based on genuine re-cycling.

Lie number three

A third basic lie spread by (most) media is their denial of the rapidly approaching but unpredictable "tipping points" that will soon be triggered by the heating of our planet.

Resulting from several centuries of our burning fossil fuels and building cities, these tipping points may come in various ways.

They may involve the irreversible melting of ice-caps and glaciers; the sudden extinction of inter-dependent species - including rain forests; or the altered flow of ocean currents and jet-streams.

Although national leaders talk together regularly, and politicians make promises, none has so far had the will to stop the ruthless greed of fossil-fuel merchants.

They won't even admit the elephant in the room, the disaster that is rapidly approaching.

The Holy Spirit

But at Pentecost we reflect on the Holy Spirit, which is mentioned hundreds of times in the pages of the New Testament.

This Spirit moves people to speak in prophesy - Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, John the Baptist.

The Spirit overwhelmed the adult Jesus at his baptism, driving him out into the desert and then leading him on his mission.

By the Spirit's power he healed people and drove out demons.

He told his followers that they can call on the Spirit within them when they were attacked for speaking the truth.

John's later gospel calls it the Spirit of Truth (14:17, 15:26, 16:13), and reflects how we can each receive this divine Spirit.

At our present time of grave world crisis, it must be obvious to anyone believing in God, that God's Spirit is not the exclusive property of any one faith tradition or clergy.

On the contrary, we each need urgently to call on this tremendous gift within us, using the Divine power it gives to unite our human family and to heal our fragile planet.

• First published in Finding the Treasure
• Peter Murnane O.P. is a Melbourne-based Dominican Friar, author and political activist. (Originally, CathNews was in error, saying Peter was New Zealand based.)

The Late Show host will narrate Pope Francis' audiobook Life: My Story Through History.

He will narrate the six-hour audiobook, which comes out on March 19 via HarperAudio, alongside Franciscan friar and priest John Quigley. The release coincides with HarperOne's publication of the book.

In the book, Pope Francis shares for the first time the story of his life through the events that have marked humanity over the past eighty-plus years - from the outbreak of the Second World War to the present day. Read more

Every single one of them offered encouraging words of hope.

But if one wants to know what is happening at this synodal assembly, those words of hope are pretty much all we have for now, given that Pope Francis has chosen a policy that limits the media's access to what is going on behind the closed-door meetings.

Paul VI instituted the Synod of Bishops in 1965 and the next year issue its first Ordo, the set of regulations and procedures.

It made clear his desire that the Synod assemblies would be a hortus conclusus, a protected moment shielded from the press and public scrutiny.

Only later did Synod assemblies gradually become more open to the press and the public.

Francis' current policy therefore marks a strange return to the past - but not to the days of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Ironically, compared to "Synod 2023", the various assemblies that were held during those two pontificates actually featured more openness in revealing the contents of the discussions that took place in the Synod Hall.

There could have been other methods

The new lack of openness is problematic, because it could hamper the Synod assembly from becoming the spark that ignites synodality in the global Church.

Journalism has been called "the first draft of history", and without more openness and less secrecy it will be difficult, in years to come, to write a history of this synodal assembly.

Historiographical accounts of ecclesial events are different - but not separated - from the continuous making of the tradition in a community, including the Church.

Pope Francis has not been precise (to say the least) in outlining his expectations of the role journalists should play in the Church.

For example, there are some differences between the Church's relationship with journalists, per se, and its relationship with Catholic journalists.

The Synod is not a conclave; there could have been other methods to preserve the freedom of synodal members (such as some version of the "Chatham House Rule").

It's not just Francis' fear of what journalists, of whom he has always tried to make a very attentive and strategic use, could say that could perturb this retreat-like assembly of the Synod.

In fact, the assemblies held during previous pontificates were not just of a different kind.

They were also carefully controlled by the Roman Curia and, in some sense, already scripted to achieve a specific outcome.

And this Synod has been structured more as a retreat of a small ecclesial community than a meeting of delegates of the global Church.

More photos to look at than texts to read

This is also a different era in the history of the mass media and of the use and misuse of the media in the Church and by Catholics.

The "culture war" narratives have changed the role of the media with polarising effects in the ecclesial conversation.

But there is also a change in the technology that this Synod assembly is evidencing.

In the more than two weeks that it's been in session, we have been given more photos to look at than written texts to read! There's a real temptation to call this the "Synod of selfies".

It is true that photos provide a narrative as well. But they can also be very misleading.

Our culture today is one of images in ways that the culture of twenty years ago was not. That was before smartphones and social media changed our daily relationship with reality, including ecclesial reality.

There's now a whole new iconography - not paintings of dead saints, but self-made instant icons of living ecclesial leaders in our ubiquitous celebrity culture.

There is a whole psychology and spirituality of selfies (especially selfies taken by and with Catholic celebrities - the pope, cardinals, bishops, etc.) that the policies of the Synod and self-discipline of Synod members could and should take into account.

On the other hand, this policy and the world media's relative silence about the Synod are strangely fitting in this moment when so many lamps are going out in our world.

It makes sense that news on the Synod is being overshadowed by other world events such as those in Israel and Gaza, without forgetting Ukraine and the situation in the Caucasus.

Moreover, the policy concerning the media and the Synod is also a failure to understand or appreciate that if synodality is to work the Church must engage the media's quest for news-making narratives in ways that are different from the recent past - especially from the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

The pope's big gamble

Synodality entails redefining the roles of the characters on the stage of the religious and spiritual drama that should be at the center of the Christian story.

In its coverage of the Catholic Church, the media will always place much attention on the ecclesiastical game, that is, on Church politics.

But this does not mean that the Church should provide the media with the usual script.

At the same time, it is also important to note that in the Synod assemblies that preceded Francis, there was greater separation between those who are members of the assembly and those who craft a media narrative on the Synod.

Among those whom the Jesuit pope has appointed as members of the current assembly, are individuals well known for their ability to influence narratives on the Church in both the Catholic and mainstream media.

They have been quite visible in these days.

There are also elderly and eminent theologians at this assembly - some of them octogenarians who have been real fathers of the theology of synodality since the 1970s.

But, since they don't take selfies like those in the hall who are savvier with social media, we don't see many (if any) photos of them participating the Synod. It's almost as if they are not even there.

Francis' new policy concerning the Synod and the media must also be seen in light of the relationship between the news and the truth. We are now at a new stage of the "post-truth" age.

It's not they we are uninterested in truth, it's that many now believe it is impossible and futile to know the truth, or to trust the media - and other institutions, the Church included - in their presentations of the truth.

Through his new Synod-media policy, the pope has taken a huge gamble on what type of reception synodality among the world's Catholics during the long period between the current session of Synod assembly and its second session in October 2024.

It's also big gamble for the papacy, which has come to rely more and more on mainstream media to tell its story - not the Church's, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

• Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia) and a much published author and commentator. He is a visiting professor in Europe and Australia.
• First published in La Croix. Republished with permission.

I have covered almost every synod since.

It has never been easy.

Meetings of the synod are usually closed, and the information released to the press is carefully controlled.

The Vatican wishes to project an image of prayerful harmony in which the bishops exchange ideas with no conflict.

The media, on the other hand, thrives on conflict. You will never read a headline saying, "Participants love one another; everything is fine."

Covering the Synod on Synodality has been especially difficult.

Pope Francis does not like the press, especially the Western media, which, he believes, only writes about issues of concern to the Global North.

Thus, at the 2015 Synod on the Family, the coverage focused on Francis' intentions for divorced and remarried Catholics.

• Can they get annulments?
• Can they go to Communion?
• And can married couples practice birth control?

There was little concern for the plight of

• refugee families,
• human trafficking,
• forced marriages of families broken by the need for men to migrate to find work to support their families.

Likewise, at the Synod on the Pan-Amazon Region, in 2019, the Western media's focus was on the possibility of ordaining married men to deal with the shortage of priests in rural communities in the Amazon.

And many thought might open the door to married priests everywhere.

Little attention was given to the Indigenous people in the region who were being displaced and killed in order to provide beef, lumber and minerals to the industrialised world.

Nor did the importance of the Amazon rain forest as a consumer of carbon dioxide get much attention.

At the current synod, the media is no less fascinated by hot-button issues put on the agenda by Catholics in the Church's global listening sessions that kicked off the synod:

• blessings for gay couples,
• the prospect of married priests
• and women priests and deacons.

For Francis, the synod is about a new way of being a Church, a path for overcoming divisions through conversations in the Spirit and a new way of making decisions in the Church through discernment.

Secrecy - not great communication

Every synod has had an antagonistic relationship with the media.

Journalists are suspicious by nature.

The media suspects people are hiding something, and the less you give reporters, the more suspicious they become.

Francis has acknowledged that the Vatican has tightly controlled earlier synods.

At the 2001 synod on the role of the bishop, called by John Paul II, Francis was named a "relator" — a papal-appointed coordinator — and he recalled being told what topics could not be discussed.

If they were discussed, he was told, they should be left out of the public reports. At the first synod he oversaw as pope, he encouraged the members to speak boldly and not worry about what people thought.

Despite the general gag order, information about the synods generally got leaked to the Italian press.

Many observers see in this a method for officials of the Roman curia, the bureaucrats of the Church, to control the narrative of the synod. Stop the bishops from talking to the press while at the same time secretly giving stories to the curia's favourite journalists.

There is some logic to confidentiality for synodal discussions. Secrecy promotes free debate and allows members to speak without fear of retribution from their hostile government.

How much material is made available to the press has varied from synod to synod.

At some, nothing was made public except the final report.

At others, speakers could release part of their addresses but not the full texts.

Some American bishops have responded by dropping the first sentence, the one greeting the pope and the synodal members, then publishing the rest.

Some synods even released the reports from the small group discussions. These reports gave a summary of the discussions but never told who said what.

I found them very helpful in writing stories on the synod.

Vatican's pots and pans communication strategy

At the Synod on Synodality, major addresses have been open to the press, but, sadly, the reports from the small group discussions remain secret.

In addition, the major addresses have been more on process than substance, which gives the media little to talk about.

Without access to the small group discussions, the press is not able to get a feel for what is going on in the synod.

The Vatican approach to the press is the equivalent of telling people what pots and pans are in the kitchen without letting them watch the chef cook the meal.

Eventually, the synod may serve a delicious meal, but no one will know how they did it. No one will learn how to cook.

Since releasing the reports from the small groups in the past did not harm the synodal process, it is incomprehensible why Francis refuses to allow it for this synod.

Without anything to write about, the media is giving attention to the sideshows and demonstrations happening outside the synod.

I have chosen to look elsewhere, writing about

• Laudate Deum, the pope's new document on global warming,
• or to cover the byplay leading up to the synod: the "dubia,"
• or questions raised by five conservative cardinals,
• and the retreat talks given to the synodal members by the Dominican Timothy Radcliffe prior to the synod.

Francis does not 'get' Western media

Francis does not understand when it comes to the media, you either feed the beast or the beast eats you.

You either control the narrative, or the narrative is controlled by anyone who grabs the media's attention.

In the past, it was the progressive press that saw conspiracies everywhere.

Today, it is the conservative Catholic media that believes that everything is being controlled by a cabal of liberal theologians and officials.

Perhaps the pope should lock up the press and force them to do a month of prayer, conversation in the Spirit and discernment. That would be fun to watch.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

The clarification followed a recent interview given by German Cardinal Gerhard Müller to EWTN, raising questions about Pope Francis's call for a media 'fast'.

Italian layman Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Vatican's Dicastery for Communications, addressed journalists during an October 6 press briefing.

"It's an assembly of brothers and sisters who have been given this time" to pray and reflect together, "then there is personal discernment in all of this.

"We are not speaking of punishment or not, but a personal discernment the pope asked of the members, and the discernment is left to each individual person," Ruffini said.

The Synod, titled "For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission" opened on October 4 and is set to run until October 29. It is part of a multi-year process initiated by Pope Francis in October 2021, culminating in a second discussion in October 2024.

"Fast" from publicity

Pope Francis had urged the 464 participants to refrain from media engagement to prioritise listening and maintain a certain "fast" from publicity.

"A certain asceticism" is needed for the synod, the pope said. He asked forgiveness from journalists trying to cover the month-long meeting.

Still, Pope Francis insisted "a certain fasting from public words" would be needed to ensure the proper spiritual atmosphere for the synod members.

While there would be no punishment for breaking pontifical secrecy, the guidelines for the synod stressed the importance of confidentiality and discretion among participants throughout the gathering.

Ruffini provided insight into the discussions, mentioning topics such as seminary formation, the role of the laity and women, the liturgy, welcoming the marginalised, and prioritising the poor.

The role and status of young people, women's participation and clericalism were also discussed.

Participants called for greater co-responsibility between pastors and the people, addressing clerical abuse and emphasising that the church is not just for the perfect but for all, especially those on the margins.

Synodality itself was a topic of discussion, with calls for active collaboration between pastors and the people.

Sources

CruxNow

UCA News

Catholic New Agency

CathNews New Zealand

Journalists can only hope that the hypothesis of imposing the pontifical secret (the highest kind of confidentiality in the Church) on the deliberations will be rejected.

This is a very important issue for those who cover the Vatican, but also for all those - Catholics and non-Catholics - who will follow, more or less intentionally, the October 4-29 session of this Synod assembly on the Church's future.

This is a very important event that has no precedent in the history of the Synod of Bishops, which Paul VI instituted in 1965.

Indeed, in some ways it resembles the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which spanned four sessions.

Vatican I and Vatican II: from still photos to live television

If the (First) Vatican Council (1869-70) was the council of newspapers and photography, and the pontificates between World War I and World II were in the age of the radio and of cinema, Vatican II was the council of television.

John XXIII was the first pope regularly on TV: when he visited the parishes of Rome and the prison near the Vatican, when he travelled to Loreto and Assisi, and when he signed - live on camera - his last encyclical, Pacem in terris.

At the time, the only mass media outlet in Italy was the RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana), the national radio and television network funded by taxpayers and under the control of the country's political parties.

It was the beginning of an alliance between Christian-Democrats and Socialists - the so-called "opening to the left", which right-wing Catholics and Vatican officials loathed, but John XXIII actually welcomed.

RAI had a monopoly on the images of the Vatican at the time of Vatican II, and it kept it until 1983 when the Holy See created the Centro Televisivo Vaticano (CTV).

RAI had a very pro-Vatican II stance.

It offered a lot of programs, specials, and documentaries explaining the Council to a wide audience.

Not only did it feature interviews with the council fathers, theological experts (periti), and ecumenical observers from all over the world, but it also showcased historians, artists, filmmakers, and legal thinkers. It was visibly different from Vatican Radio, which only interviewed the bishops.

Television became part of the history of Vatican II right from the beginning, broadcasting the procession of the world episcopate and council fathers during the opening ceremony of October 1962 and John XXIII's "moonlight speech" of that same night.

The communication of the conciliar events by the media, especially through television and film reels, became an integral part of the experience of Vatican II.

Certainly, more people have seen that extensive footage than those who have read the Council's documents, history or commentaries.

Thanks to the mass media, the reception of Vatican II started not at the end but right at the beginning of the council.

Between the Council's first (1962) and the second session (1963), it became clear that the Vatican's attempt to control media access could not work.

Things inevitably became more transparent.

When seeing (on TV) was no longer believing

It was a golden age for the collaboration between the Catholic Church and the media: not just because most or many decision-makers at the RAI (which provided other broadcasting corporations with all kinds of content) were Catholic.

That was an era when television still played an educational, teacher-like role for a trusting and docile public;

• when mass media channels were few and acted like gatekeepers, with an attitude of deference to the institution and the clergy;
• when the Church was still not divided in different parties around the hot-button issues; and
• when the Vatican and the Catholic media system had a large degree of control over the Church's narrative.

There was a different ecclesial dynamic, but also a different relationship between the media and social-political events in the early 1960s.

Then in the late 1960s, shortly after the Council ended, something broke.

The war in Vietnam became the first ever to be played out on television.

People began questioning how fairly the media was covering it and other disruptive events at the time, such as the radical politics that descended on Chicago for the 1968 National Democratic Convention, the students' protests in European and American campuses, or the Black Power salute at the Olympic games in Mexico City.

Different from just a few years earlier at the time of Vatican II, seeing (on TV) was no longer believing; or at least it meant seeing, believing something different from or opposite to the institutional narrative.

It was the beginning of the widespread belief that the media could not be trusted, or that only that media one are already agreed with could be trusted.

One way or another, media will be a part of the synodal process

Fast forward to the Synod assembly of October 2023.

No one expects something like the 1968 National Democratic Convention in Chicago in terms of public demonstrations and violence (as a memento for the next conclave: that year ended with the election of Richard Nixon to the US presidency).

But the changes in the relationship between the media, institutions, and public trust is a lesson that the Catholic Church is learning the hard way because of the abuse crisis.

This is the age of social media and digital media, where the Internet allows anyone to broadcast his or her opinion to the entire world in real-time, and the more divisive, the better for a certain militant mentality.

The dynamics of identity-driven media narratives are essentially contrary to the idea of a shared ecclesial experience.

One way or another, the media will be part of the synodal process.

This is because the Catholic Church lives of tradition but also of history and memory.

How many participants will keep a diary of their Synod experience or write letters that future scholars of Catholicism will be able to study in the future?

A Synod assembly that independent media cannot cover or have access to its participants will not reach many Catholics to say anything of the rest of the world.

Moreover, as French historian Pierre Nora said almost fifty years ago, reflecting on the turbulent events of 1968, "Press, radio, images do not act only as means from which events are relatively independent, but as the very condition of their existence."In other words, having a synodal discernment exercise draped in secrecy is as good as not having it all - or worse.

A question of credibility

The Synod is in a bind.

On the one hand, there is the necessity to avoid media coverage that magnifies existing polarization, where there seem to be only two sides or two parties (and only two) for every issue.

There is also the risk for the Church of what Nora called the "monster event", where the media system tends to make everything sensational or permanently manufacture novelties and feed the hunger for events.

On the other hand, the Church also needs the media to convey the synodal energy and momentum and to create a minimum of commonly accepted information about what is happening inside the Synod assembly.

In order to be credible, this cannot come only from Vatican-controlled media.

The role of the media at Vatican II was crucial because it helped Catholics and non-Catholics discover - and in many cases, see for the first time - the catholicity of Catholicism.

The colourful procession at the opening ceremony on October 11, 1962 - with all the bishops coming to Rome from the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Catholic Churches in the Americas, Africa, and Asia - visually represented the end of centuries of Romanization, Latinization, and Eurocentrism.

Synodality is also about a reformulation of the catholicity of Catholicism in a global Church.

The Synod assembly of 2023-2024 is a test of how to do this while dealing with a 21st-century media system.

• Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia) and a much-published author and commentator. He is a visiting professor in Europe and Australia.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

RNZ has unwittingly acted as a Kiwi branch of the Russian propaganda machine, Stuff reporting has been off-balance, and TVNZ is pulling the Hitler card.

There are many good media professionals working hard to sort out the polluted pond, but what can we do in the meantime?

At times like these, I turn to my trusty field guide on fallacious fishes, and I thought I would share a few of the most common culprits with you.

So pull on your waders and grab your rods; we're going to take a look at some basic principles on what to reel in and what to chuck back in the murky blue depths of political reporting.

Arguing that something is true because a particular person or media outlet reported it is an example of a Latin fish called Ad Verecundiam or "appeal to authority."

Just because a purported Reuter's or BBC article says it doesn't make it true.

It could, in fact, be propaganda dressed in Reuter scales.

Always interrogate your catch and verify facts with other sources.

Check for slanting.

This virulent infection has spread through schools of journalism—shaping the tone of the article to reflect the reporter's bias and influence the way you respond to the facts provided.

Consider the difference between "only 600 protestors" and "a crowd of 600 protestors."

If we can become better consumers of the news, we can protect ourselves against inaccuracy and manipulation.

A fleet of little fishes all agreeing with one another does not make a scientific consensus, as Stuff has found out this week in its failed attempt to use Ad Populum (appeal to the masses) to convince the NZ Media Council that they didn't need to provide both sides of the argument in their article on puberty blockers.

Always check that you hear both sides of the story; if the particular source you are tuning into only appears to present unified voices, throw out a wider net.

Finally, if a fish quotes Hitler, outside the context of World War II, abandon ship.

Cushla Norman's Lebensborn reference was a collective catch of red herring (irrelevant points distracting from the argument), loaded question (asking a question to which there is no acceptable answer), genetic fallacy (undermining an argument by reference to unsavoury characters who may have held a similar view) and strawman (creating an effigy of an argument in order to dispute it) among others.

The media are responsible for providing accurate and balanced reporting.

We are responsible for considering what is on our hook before we take it home to the kitchen.

There are a great many more fallacious fish in the sea.

Fortunately, there are some excellent resources out there to help us to identify them.

If we can become better consumers of the news, we can protect ourselves against inaccuracy and manipulation.

The media are responsible for providing accurate and balanced reporting. We are responsible for considering what is on our hook before we take it home to the kitchen.

• Natasha Baulis and her young family moved from the remote Ikuntji community in Haasts Bluff, NT, to join Maxim Institute in 2022. She comes from a background in anthropology, with six years of experience in the not-for-profit sector in East Africa and several years working in training for political engagement in Australia.
• First published by the Maxim Institute. Republished with permission.

The Christian Gospel, which is a word meaning, ‘good news' - is that the Creator of all things, God, so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him should not perish but have life now and eternally.

To put it another way, God who is Just provides salvation.

And what that means in practice, is a worldview that trusts the faithfulness of God.

At the same time, Christians live in a God-created community, the Church - and that is the rub.

The Church, being full of human beings, is full of those who go wrong.

The Church often seeks to speak truth to power, but we must recognise as different bits of the Church, and, speaking as the Church of England, our own power as well as our immense failures and sins.

And therefore, we should welcome the challenge and scrutiny from the media that is part of living in a democratic society. Having spent a good deal of my life travelling in places that don't have those freedoms, I know which I prefer.

When I started this job just over 10 years ago, the media landscape, even that short period ago looked different. It has become faster, more complex, more driven by social media.

In an age of misinformation, distraction, and the competition of noise with truth, it is ever more difficult for journalists to do their job. The best account of that I've heard recently was a series of podcasts by Jeremy Bowen, that some people may have seen - they make long journeys go very quickly!

My approach to the media has developed over 10 years.

I take more risks, deliberately rather than accidentally.

I try to engage, and I recognise the vital importance of seeking to communicate well what the Church is doing and what we actually care about.

I tried to say yes to as many media outlets as possible, especially the local and the regional.

I know how successful they are because they are deeply embedded in the community.

I have a very strong memory of a visit to a particular diocese in the province of Canterbury and being asked - did I enjoy travelling on buses, and what I thought about the bus timetable in that particular town?

They were certainly embedded in the community.

And they do marvellous things, especially at the local level, being immensely stretched and having had an incredibly hard time in the last 10 years.

I actually quite enjoy interviews, believe it or not, although they make me very nervous.

I could sit on the sidelines, and I'm very tempted to do so very often, knowing that when anything is said in public by anyone, it will be analysed and instrumentalised.

One of the relatively few things I'm looking forward to in my eventual and long distant retirement is being able to read the paper without worrying about whether I'll see my own name in any context at all.

There are two aspects to any religious figure's involvement in the media.

First, you're reported on - for example, after making a speech on the Illegal Migration Bill.

Secondly, there is the context of engaging with the media proactively and giving interviews or engaging on social media.

There's a difference.

So if we start off by engaging with the media, why do it?

The greatest single reason is that Christian faith claims truth.

For Christians, truth is not a concept, it is a person - Jesus, not an idea.

When in John, Chapter 14:1-6, one of Jesus's disciples expostulates with him when he says, you know where I'm going, and the disciple says to Jesus, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.

And Jesus replies, I am, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

When Pilate, at his trial says what is Truth?

He's asking the wrong question.

He should ask who is Truth - and Truth is standing before him, beaten and bloodied, and looking anything but impressive.

When I was interviewed by Alastair Campbell several years ago, we talked about his famous phrase ‘We don't do God'.

And we talked about the fact that even if New Labour didn't do God, God still does us and, for that matter, New Labour.

God's faithfulness and providence is an embracing worldview that is not a private hobby but a universal principle, recognised or not.

Terry Pratchett, whose books I found enormously amusing, has a book called ‘Small gods' and the size of the god depends on how many worshippers they have.

Well, it's clever and amusing, but it's false.

God does not need worshippers; people and creation need God.

If we take the Illegal Migration Bill, for example, I find myself reminded of the passage in Matthew 25:31-46, which is about the Last Judgement.

It concerns two groups of people who unknowingly live in a way that either honours or fails to honour God's commands for our way of life in the world.

It echoes what's often called the Nazareth manifesto.

In Luke chapter 4:16-21, these two groups of people, the sheep and the goats they're called, they either feed the hungry or fail to do so, they nurse the sick, they visit the prisoner, and as we think about the Illegal Migration Bill, they welcome the stranger - or they fail to do so.

The second group lived as though it didn't matter.

The first group is welcomed by Christ to eternal life.

The second group have to face the terrible consequences of living for their own interests, as though those in need did not matter.

Churches are active in this world and in its concerns because they see God being active in this world. And many of those people who call for our help are Christians.

Churches are over 2 billion strong in every country around the world, even the Anglican Communion spans about 80 or 85 million people across 165 countries. And the typical Anglican is a woman in her 30s in Sub Saharan Africa, likely living in an area of conflict or persecution who lives on less than $4 a day.

Anglicans live in the hills of Papua New Guinea or, they work in the streets of the City of London, or in the banks and the dealing rooms.

So when I talk about migration or about poverty, or conflict or trade or natural disaster, or climate change or social justice, it isn't a hobby or a way of filling the otherwise empty days.

When I talk about these things, I see in my mind's eye the people I know and love around the world.

The people I call brother and sister because we belong to the same family in Christ.

Being part of that changes everything. Religion isn't a bolt on to our lives.

It's not an app you can download into the human software.

It's the entire operating system.

It's the prism through which we see everything else.

And then this country may be becoming more secular or not, as the case may be.

The world as a whole is not, 80% of the world population is religious, and it's going up, not shrinking.

So when we talk about religion or religious people, we're not studying some endangered exotica under the microscope.

Of course, not all of that 80% are Christians, not even the majority.

And our relationship with other faiths is very important, as we saw at the Coronation.

We work closely with other faiths not just out of a deep sense of hospitality, which is arising from our understanding of the nature of God.

But also because other religious groups have a religious perspective that shapes how they see the world.

The Big Help Out, a volunteering initiative on the Monday after the Coronation, was endorsed by religious groups.

And you may have seen the images in the news: Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, and others of no faith and of other faiths got together.

It involved 7.2 million people in this country, well over 10% of the country.

It was a project started by the Together Coalition, which I chair, and on that day, Caroline and I served lunch together at a homeless charity.

Going back finally to what I said at the beginning, about 'good news'.

At the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops from around the world, which happened for the first time in 14 years last summer in Canterbury, I joined journalists who were covering it at a reception.

During that gathering, I said, yes of course we know there are stories about deep disagreements over sexuality that they would want to report on, and rightly so; they're important issues, and they are a good story.

But please remember that, at that gathering, I said there are people from war-torn countries and nations suffering from famine and drought, people who have literally just fled oppression and brutality, and people who have come from refugee camps.

Bishops represent the most vulnerable people in the world.

At the Lambeth Conference we talked extensively; we spent two hours on sexuality in 10 days, on everything else, slavery and justice, suffering.

But we chose to love one another despite our differences.

Please, in your reporting, don't forget the millions of people and the incredible stories that the Christian church and even the Church of England represent. Because I think that is also good news for all its faults, both for journalists and Christians.

So now, as I finish, I'd like to turn the tables and ask a couple of questions of you.

How do you communicate the worldview of religious people, as well as the fact in a way that just doesn't put their religion in a part of their lives?

And, can you help me through your questions and your comments, understand better, how we can communicate with you?

• Archbishop Justin Welby is Archbishop of Canterbury
• Speech delivered at Religion Media Festival

A new 40-million euro Church complex near Paris Disney will include a new church that can hold up to 900 people and a private school that can accommodate more than 1,500 students.

And in the US, a US$100 million Christian ad campaign for Jesus has commenced and will expand in the months leading up to the Super Bowl.

Funded by the Signatory, a Christian foundation based in Kansas, the "He Gets Us" campaign hopes to rescue the message of Jesus from the misdeeds of Christians, especially those who say one thing and do another.

Disneyland Paris

Opened 30 years ago, the Disneyland Paris theme park is currently attracting nearly 15 million visitors per year.

Since it opened, the population of the Val d'Europe area has grown from 3,000 to over 35,000 inhabitants. It's projected to keep growing.

The multi-million euro project comes at a time when many churches in France are being closed or abandoned and Catholicism is losing ground. '

But Bishop Jean-Yves Nahmias says the planned new facility isn't a big risk.

"It's a gamble on a future that is already here," he says.

"There is a missionary logic: we are affirming our faith. But, concretely, the demands of the families and young people on the spot are pressing. The school will be full, as will the church," he predicts.

Father Gérard Pelletier, who is pastor of the Val d'Europe missionary cluster, says the village churches in the cluster are too small and too far from Disneyland for the current and future needs.

"We lack space and a parish house to carry out our activities," Pelletier says. "Beyond 30 people, it becomes complicated very quickly. In addition, the churches are too small for gathering the entire parish, for instance, on Christmas Eve."

Nahmias remembers celebrating confirmations in crowded churches where not everyone could fit. The new church and the school — ranging from kindergarten to post-baccalaureate — are eagerly awaited - even by people who are not Catholic.

The Super Bowl

The US Super Bowl isn't an event many would imagine advertising loving your neighbour and other Christian virtues.

Yet that's exactly what's happening.

Ads featuring online videos about Jesus as a rebel, an activist or a dinner party host have been viewed over 300 million times. Billboards with messages like "Jesus let his hair down, too" and "Jesus went all in, too," have been posted in major centres.

Still to come are an updated website, an online store where people can get free gear if they forgive someone or welcome a stranger, and an outreach programme for churches.

The campaign has done extensive market research and found that, while many Americans like Jesus, they are sceptical of his followers.

The behaviour of Christians is a barrier to faith, say many.

The He gets Us campaign hopes to change this view.

Source

• Religion News Service
• La Croix

Last week I decided I'd give it a go.

Collective Noun

What is the collective noun for banality presenters? Is it a "glut of banalisers" or a "nonsense of news readers"?

Whatever the collective noun, NZ television news has cornered the banality market and raised banality to an art form where information is constructed to meet the maxim "let them eat cake".

The lack of informed, intelligent debate is mind-numbing regarding important issues.

And, the absence of interviewers with the skills to understand an issue or question without running an ideological line of harassment is worrisome.

If NZ television and radio were my only sources, I could be forgiven for thinking that New Zealand is the centre of the universe and that sport and Gib supply are the most critical issues facing humankind.

Gib and Sport

Gib board and sports are more important than child poverty, the escalating cost of living, the higher use of foodbanks, and the lack of critical infrastructure and the people to run it.

Gib board and sports are more important than the actual cost of family violence—people in temporary housing and children, displaced from schools, not to mention hospital admissions.

Speaking of health care provision.

The crisis is not limited to the lack of nursing staff and hospital beds and the migration of NZ-trained nurses to Australia.

It includes cancer patients not having follow-up consultations and Emergency Departments becoming short-stay hospital wards.

In Emergency Departments, people lie on trolleys in the corridor, and family members interrupt emergency staff by asking for directions to the water fountain.

These are places where non-emergency patients don't always get regular nursing care or water and food.

Perhaps, the media do us a service in focussing our minds on Gib and sport because healthcare delivery is so complex and political, and we don't want to face it.

Back to the rugby

Didn't Ireland inflict national shame? I was fine because either way, my national team won!

Wasn't the shaming of the coaches and the team therapeutic?

Isn't it good to have a group of individuals we can take out ire our on? Perhaps next time we could blame them for Covid, mortgage payment increases, global warming, and so much more?

The transference of shame feels good.

Transference is like a fissure in a mountain, just large enough to let off steam and quieten the deeper tectonic forces that could rip us apart were we to face them.

And now for the News

And then there's the weather. You may have noticed it has been raining recently.

Here's the NZ television news:

"Good evening, this is Smug Presenter with the news. Today it has been raining.

We cross to Wet Reporter to get an update. Kia ora Wet Reporter."

"Tena koutou, Smug Presenter in your warm, dry studio and you lot at home.

I'm standing outside Main City studio in the rain with an update on the rain in Small Town, 500 kilometres away."

"So, Wet Reporter, do you think it will continue raining? And if it does, what's the long-term impact on car parking in Main City?"

"Thanks, Smug Presenter, for the insightful leading question.

I'm just a Wet Reporter, so I will make up the answer:

the impact on Main City parking will be huge and potentially catastrophic.

Local leaders will set up an enquiry that will allow all the vested interests to ask for more.

As for Small Town, they don't have a studio, so I guess they will just continue to get wet.

Now back to you, Smug Presenter."

"Hei kona mai Wet Reporter.

Having just had in-depth reporting from Wet Reporter, here's Weather Person with another insightful commentary on rain before we repeat it all in 30 minutes."

Some of the print media is no better; at least fact-checking might be good a place to start.

...And the moral of the story is?

Well, that's for each of us to consider… or not.

They need to find ways to combat situations where media can "become places of toxicity, hate speech and fake news," he says.

His message for members of Signis, the World Catholic Association for Communication, makes his position on their work clear: Catholic communicators have an important role to play "through media education, networking Catholic media and countering lies and misinformation".

Francis's words for Signis members was particularly aimed at the Catholic media who will be attending, in person or online, the Signis World Congress in Seoul, South Korea, on 15-18 August.

The theme for the World Congress is "Peace in the Digital World".

"During the months of lockdown due to the pandemic, we saw clearly how digital media could bring us together, not only by disseminating essential information but also by bridging the loneliness of isolation and, in many cases, uniting whole families and ecclesial communities in prayer and worship," the pope's message says.

He also notes that digital media and especially some social media platforms have "raised a number of serious ethical issues that call for wise and discerning judgment on the part of communicators and all those concerned with the authenticity and quality of human relationships.

"Sometimes and in some places media sites have become places of toxicity, hate speech and fake news," his message says.

Francis is urging Signis and other Catholic media professionals to double their efforts to "assist people, especially young people, to develop a sound critical sense, learning to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, good from evil, and to appreciate the importance of working for justice, social concord and respect for our common home".

Pointing to his message for World Communications Day 2022, Francis also urged members to remember that listening is "the first and indispensable ingredient of dialogue and good communication".

Source

• America Magazine

The reaction was immediate and frenzied. The overwhelmingly left-liberal (i.e. pro-abortion) media, not just in America but throughout the English-speaking world, erupted with fury at the prospect that a long-entrenched feminist article of faith - namely, that a woman's right to abort a baby takes precedence over the unborn child's right to survive - might be overturned. As Kerry Wakefield (a woman, in case you're wondering) pungently put it in The Spectator Australia: "The feminist offence machine ratcheted up to full, wild-eyed stridency, with Democrat congresswoman Elizabeth Warren doing everything short of howling at the moon."

The revisiting of Roe v Wade is a rare setback for a political class that has become accustomed to calling the shots. The tone of their outrage was perfectly captured by the whiny headline on a video published on the Guardian's website: "It feels like such a betrayal". Another Guardian headline pronounced that the Alito draft, if adopted, would be a "global catastrophe for women". Such restraint ...

Well, better suck it up, folks. The anti-abortion lobby knows all too well what it's like to be on the losing side. Now the boot appears to be on the other foot and the champions of abortion rights are not taking it at all well.

But here's the thing. In the weeks since the leak, I've listened to hours of discussion, analysis and speculation on the BBC and America's left-leaning National Public Radio. Not once did I hear a pro-life voice. (Correction: the BBC's Stephen Sackur included a question about the Alito draft at the very tail end of an interview with Victoria Sparz, a pro-life Congresswoman, but left no time for her to expand on her answer.)

Not surprisingly, Roe v Wade has aroused less interest in the New Zealand media. Why should it, when the New Zealand abortion rights lobby has achieved its aim of making abortion as simple, at least in legal terms, as a tooth extraction (and treats it as if it's no more morally complicated)?

But there has been a certain amount of venting in solidarity with the American sisterhood. On TV Three's dependably woke The Project, I saw an over-excited Kate Rodger shrieking with incoherent rage while her fellow panellists nodded and murmured in agreement. No surprises there.

Media coverage of the Alito draft, in other words, has been overwhelmingly and egregiously one-sided - a perfect illustration of where the media sit in the culture wars. Even people who believe in a woman's right to have an abortion would struggle to argue that the controversy has been reported in a fair and balanced way.

As with climate change, a stifling and oppressive media groupthink prevails. And what's particularly striking about the tone of media commentary is the obvious assumption that everyone shares the media elite's anger, as if no half-intelligent or reasonable person could possibly be opposed to unrestricted abortion rights.

These are the new bigots - people who are not only intolerant of dissenting views but so convinced of their own rightness that they don't even acknowledge the existence of counter-arguments.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. One thing that did surprise me, however, was to learn that the supposedly neutral and "fiercely independent" Wellington-based online news site Scoop declined to publish two news releases on Roe v Wade from the anti-abortion group Right to Life - this after running a pro-choice column by Scoop's leftist in-house commentator Gordon Campbell and two statements from abortion rights groups attacking the Alito draft.

I've admired Scoop in the past, naively believing it was willing to publish all shades of news and opinion, but its credibility now is shot - a shame, because if it had the guts and integrity to live up to its own hype, it could serve as a valuable platform for groups unable to gain traction in the mainstream media.

As for Alito's draft decision, some pertinent facts appear to have been overlooked amid the backlash. The first and most important is that if the Supreme Court goes ahead and overturns Roe v Wade, abortion rights will become a matter for each state to decide. In other words, decisions on abortion law will be handed back to the elected representatives of the people - which, in a properly functioning democracy, is surely where they belonged in the first place. The 1973 decision overrode states' rights to determine their own laws and now they may get them back. But far from applauding this judicial nod to people power, the pro-abortion camp is aghast. Leftist ideologues tend to be distrustful of democracy because they can never be sure that people will vote the correct way.

To put it another way, a reversal of Roe v Wade would be only a partial unspooling of the law. It's not as if the court is likely to rule that abortion will become illegal everywhere and in any circumstances (although some abortion rights activists, desperate to stir up opposition even if it means telling porkies, are suggesting that's exactly what will happen).

On that note, it's amusing - in an ironic way - to hear activists wailing that a bunch of mostly male judges in Washington DC have made what they condemn as an "ideological" decision. Isn't that pretty much what happened in 1973 when the court (which was then entirely male) ruled in favour of women's right to terminate a pregnancy? The only thing different is that the dominant ideology on the court bench has been reversed. The current is now running in the other direction and the feminists, having had things their way for 50 years, don't like it.

As my friend and former colleague Bob Edlin observed, "the ruling effectively demonstrates that one bunch of judges can determine something one day, based on what they argue the US constitution allows or disallows. Another bunch of judges with different ideological leanings can rule to the contrary several years [or in this case decades] later."

As Bob points out, the US constitution hasn't changed; only the composition of the court has. This highlights a fundamental flaw in a system that places enormous power in the hands of judges appointed on the basis of their political and ideological leanings in the expectation that they will interpret the constitution accordingly.

The court is expected to release its final decision next month or in July. In the meantime we can expect to be bombarded with canards such as "abortion is a health issue". (Not for the unborn baby it's not. And in any case, since when were pregnancy and childbirth classified as illnesses?)

Placards waved by Roe v Wade demonstrators also assert that "abortion is a human right". Since when? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1948, which was the distillation of centuries of thinking and writing about the subject, makes no mention of abortion. It does, however, unequivocally assert the right to life. The fiction that abortion is a human right is an invention of late 20th century feminism, but the slogan has an undeniably catchy appeal to people incapable of thinking above bumper-sticker level.

• Karl du Fresne has been in journalism for more than 50 years. He is now a freelance journalist and blogger living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand.
• First published by Karl du Fresne. Republished with permission.

He paid particular tribute to journalists who have died or been jailed in the line of duty, defending a free press and praising those in the media who courageously report on "humanity's wounds".

Speaking to thousands of people in St. Peter's Square for his weekly address and blessing, Francis noted that May 3 will be the United Nations World Press Freedom Day.

Last month Francis honoured journalists killed covering the Russia-Ukraine war, saying he hoped God would reward them for serving the common good. Continue reading

A priest has performed thousands of baptisms incorrectly over more than 20 years because he used the wrong pronoun.

The coverage was largely one-sided and inaccurate. It appeared to be driven by an agenda rather than being an attempt to inform and educate. Read more

The publication of "Laudato Si'" was a landmark moment in the fight against climate change.

Secular environmentalists were encouraged to see such a prominent global leader devote one of his most powerful tools to their cause. Many American Catholics hoped the encyclical would inspire their bishops to make climate change a priority.

Almost as soon as the document was published, however, the US bishops showed signs that they would largely ignore the pope's exhortation in their teachings and action.

In 2019, we began looking at the American bishops' writings to their flocks to see what they have said about climate change and "Laudato Si'" over the previous five years.

We asked: Did the American bishops faithfully communicate church teachings on climate change before and after "Laudato Si'"?

Our research shows clearly that US Catholic bishops' communications collectively diminished the impact of the encyclical on climate change.

Our study focused on ordinary bishops: those who lead a geographic segment of the Catholic Church known as a diocese.

We compiled 12,077 columns published by these bishops in the official publications for 171 of the 178 Catholic dioceses in the U.S. from June 2014 — one year prior to "Laudato Si'" — to June 2019.

The bishops' columns are not only a matter of personal viewpoints.

Bishops have a duty to share the fullness of faith, including church teaching on climate change, with their diocese.

They also oversee buildings and lands, school curricula, investments and advocacy that could be used to help mitigate the climate crisis.

Overall, American Catholic bishops have been overwhelmingly silent about climate change.

Of the 12,077 columns we studied, only 93 (0.8%) mention climate change, global warming or their equivalent at all.

Those 93 columns come from just 53 of the 201 bishops in our data set. The other 148 (74%) never mentioned climate change in their columns.

Secondly, when the bishops did mention climate change, they distanced themselves from church teaching on this issue: 44 of the 93 columns (47%) that mention climate change do not refer to church teaching on the issue.

Of the 49 columns that do, many fail to substantively communicate the contents of church climate change teaching.

In six columns, the bishop downplayed the pope's authority to teach about climate change.

In nine columns, the bishop minimized focus on climate change within the church's broader ecological teachings.

Additionally, 29 columns do not clearly convey the bishop's personal view about the teaching.

Since silence can be a form of climate change denial, readers could interpret their bishop's silence as disagreement — and license for dissent.

When the bishops did mention climate change, they downplayed the parts of "Laudato Si'" that conflict with a conservative political identity or ideology.

Because US political conservatives have a history of denying, ignoring and sowing doubt about climate change, it's reasonable to assume that many bishops — who are recognized as becoming increasingly aligned with the Republican Party politically — may have experienced tension between their political ideology and their duty to communicate church climate change teaching.

The bishops, after all, fall into other demographics besides being faith leaders: They are by and large older, white Catholics. In 2016, 47% of U.S. bishops who responded to a survey said the conservative Fox News Channel was their primary source of cable news.

According to a recent academic study, conservative U.S. Catholics "devalued the pope's credibility on climate change" after "Laudato Si'" and appeared more guided on the issue by political ideology than by the pope's teaching.

This political ideology holds that climate change is not really happening, not caused by humans or not urgent.

Conversely in "Laudato Si'," Francis reiterated 25 years of papal teaching from St John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI that human-caused climate change is real and pressing.

Yet only 56 of 12,077 bishops' columns (0.46%) describe climate change as real or happening. Only 14 columns (0.12%) affirm the scientific consensus about climate change.

Only 29 columns (0.24%) describe climate change as urgent.

In "Laudato Si'," Francis approvingly cited scholarly analysis that growth-based, deregulated capitalism is the predominant cause of climate change.

The American bishops, however, were nearly silent about the economic causes of climate change.

Fifty-four of the 56 columns (96%) that do discuss climate change as real or happening fail to describe its economic roots — a phenomenon known as "ideological denialism."

The bishops who made mention of climate change also deviated from Francis on what to do about it.

The church teaches that internal and external actions are complementary and that social justice is essential to Christian love.

In "Laudato Si´," Francis calls for internal action (e.g., prayer and education) and external action, including social justice (e.g., political advocacy).

However, the U.S. bishops who discussed climate change emphasized internal over external action and widely ignored public policies.

Of the 93 columns that refer to climate change, 73 (78%) mention internal action.

Only 36 columns (39%) mention any external environmental action.

Only nine columns (9.7%) name a particular climate change policy such as the Paris Agreement.

Bishops' relative silence on environmental politics is especially notable since they were not silent in their columns about politics around other social issues, such as abortion, that show up only rarely in "Laudato Si'."

While Francis mentioned climate change 24 times and abortion only once, the bishops mentioned both issues with equal frequency when discussing the encyclical.

Our findings do not definitively show that U.S. Catholic bishops' conservatism was the primary cause of their silence on climate change or skewed teachings around "Laudato Si'."

Additionally, individual bishops may have addressed climate change in their dioceses in ways other than writing columns.

Nevertheless, our data found that as group, U.S. Catholic bishops were silent, denialist and biased about climate change in their official diocesan publications around "Laudato Si'."

We especially found them to be so in ways that correlate with conservative political identity.

Our findings raise questions about whether U.S. Catholic bishops will embrace the Vatican's new Laudato Si' Action Platform.

Our findings also suggest the U.S. bishops are squandering opportunities to connect with youth and young adults who as a demographic prioritize climate change and are increasingly less affiliated with religion, including Catholicism.

Bishops' silence on climate policy raises serious questions about how many U.S. bishops will support Vatican advocacy for an international climate agreement at the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference, which begins Nov. 1.

The U.S. Catholic Church has unprecedented capacity to help avoid climate catastrophe.

It also has a responsibility to address the climate emergency as an essential part of its mission.

To realise this potential and fidelity, however, individual U.S. bishops must fulfill their duty to teach the fullness of faith that includes church teaching on climate change.

• Daniel R. DiLeo is an associate professor and director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program at Creighton University.
• Sabrina Danielsen is assistant professor of sociology at Creighton.
• Emily E. Burke is a doctoral student in the joint Sociology and Community & Environmental Sociology Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• This essay is adapted from their article published in Environmental Research Letters with support from Creighton and the Louisville Institute.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

"I feel like it's just straight from God," she said. "It's like he blesses that coffee in particular."

More than anything, Wilson says, she loves Jesus — as the teenager from central Kentucky explains in "My Jesus," her debut recording that recently hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart for Christian music.

The bluesy gospel ballad's success doesn't end there: The official video has been viewed 6 million times on YouTube. A live version of the song, with co-writer and Christian artist, Matthew West, has been viewed more than 2.5 million times on Facebook.

A live EP from Wilson, which includes "My Jesus," has been streamed more than 37 million times, according to a press release from her record company.

But though full of full-throated praise, "My Jesus" is not a triumphal call to follow the Lord. Written after Wilson's brother was killed in an accident four years ago, the song reaches out to those who are going through difficult times. In that, it may be a hit for the COVID-19 era.

"Are you past the point of weary?" the opening lines of the song ask. "Is your burden weighing heavy? Is it all too much to carry? Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus."

Wilson, who co-wrote the song with West and Nashville songwriter Jeff Pardo, said her rapid rise to stardom began on a dark day.

After hearing the news of her brother Jacob, who was 23, Wilson said she went to a piano and began to play "What a Beautiful Name," a popular Hillsong Worship anthem. Her parents eventually asked her to play the song at Jacob's funeral.

The then-15-year-old, still in braces, later recorded a video of the song with some friends and posted it on YouTube.

"This song is dedicated to the loving memory of my beloved big brother, Jacob," Wilson wrote in the video's caption. "Thank you Jacob for always encouraging us to praise God, work hard, and always be kind. We love and miss you more each and every day."

That YouTube video, which itself has been viewed a quarter million times, caught the attention of a producer in Nashville and eventually led to Wilson signing with Capitol Christian Music.

"The unprecedented success of ‘My Jesus' is just the beginning, and we cannot wait to see what is to come for Anne," Capital Christian Music co-presidents Brad O'Donnell and Hudson Plachy said in a statement.

Wilson grew up in a Christian home, attending a Presbyterian church for most of her childhood. Her parents taught her about faith in God, and she says that she made that faith her own as a teenager.

Her parents also introduced her to country music, especially the songs of Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton. She remains a huge Dolly fan, citing Parton's 1980 hit "9 to 5" as her current favourite.

Though Wilson started playing the piano at a young age, she said that she had never sung in public before her brother's funeral. An astronomy and science buff, she said her childhood dream was to work for NASA.

Being a professional musician had never crossed her mind, she said.

In a phone interview, Wilson said she hopes Jacob is proud of her. The two were close growing up and she recalled his sense of humour and kindness. She recalled one day when, knowing that Wilson had stayed home from school because she was feeling sick, her brother decided to go out and hunt some squirrels for her.

Jacob took his hunting dog, Sally, out to the backyard, shot a squirrel and cooked it up for lunch. The meal made her laugh and was surprisingly tasty.

"We put powdered sugar on it and we dipped it in barbecue sauce, and whatever that combo is, it was so good," she said.

Wilson has spent the last two years honing her skills as a musician and writer and learning the craft of singing for a living. She's also moved away from her family's home, settling in Franklin, Tennessee, a Nashville suburb that's home to Christian music stars such as Amy Grant.

When not on the road, Wilson is working on songs for her album, due out next year.

The success of "My Jesus" caught her by surprise. She knew the song was good but was taken aback by how well it connected with listeners. Most of all, she said, she feels grateful.

"It's been a whirlwind of emotions," said Wilson. "Just thankfulness and gratefulness, watching God take my story, which was something so broken, and turning it into something so beautiful."

• Bob Smietana is a veteran religion writer and national reporter for Religion News Service.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

These days, many media outlets are talking only to segments of the population.

For the New Zealand media, 2021 has been a year of cancellations.

Finance minister Grant Robertson cancelled his weekly MagicTalk interview slot with Peter Williams. Presenter Sean Plunket left the station before there was a chance to cancel him.

Recently, the Herald cancelled historian and former Labour cabinet minister Michael Bassett after publishing (and unpublishing) a column of his. And finally, the Prime Minister cancelled her weekly interview slot with Newstalk's Mike Hosking.

Each incident is different, yet they all point to ongoing political polarisation.

You do not have to agree with Williams, Plunket, Bassett or Hosking to know that many New Zealanders do. That is why Mike Hosking reaches a large segment of society with his morning show.

Hosking's audience will now miss out on the weekly interview with the Prime Minister. That is a pity for them and for Hosking.

But the greater damage is that this cancellitis creates more echo chambers in our media.

Where politicians only speak to audiences close to them, there will be no tough questions, no hard talk and little to learn. And where journalists only interview politicians they like, they are in danger of becoming acolytes.

It gets worse. As a growing segment of online and print news is now serving left-of-centre audiences, this leaves a diverse group to their right homeless.

Yes, these groups could still listen to Hosking. They could also resort to reading international newspapers like The Times, The Australian or the Wall Street Journal. But they would struggle to find similar written content here.

According to the mediabias.co.nz research project, all mainstream media outlets in New Zealand show a left-wing bias. Continue reading

• Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of the New Zealand Initiative

A self-described "cradle Catholic" and graphic design student at Liberty University, Schneider, now 21, began using her TikTok as "@the_religious_hippie," a fun moniker her friends gave her.

She was posting casually, but had what she calls a "turning point" in her faith, and began posting openly about her beliefs.

"At first, I felt like I was the only Catholic," said Schneider, who now has nearly 90,000 followers. "But then I discovered people like me, from everywhere, with one thing in common: we all love God."

Even as its future in the U.S. remains unclear, the viral social media app continues to grow, especially among young users.

Over half of TikTok's users are between ages 10 and 29.

The app, first launched in China in 2016 before later merging with Musical.ly, showcases a newsfeed of simple, short-form entertainment videos made by creators themselves.

People can also see algorithm-selected videos in their newsfeed, based on people, trends or hashtags they follow.

For young U.S. Catholics like Schneider, TikTok is more than an app for dances, funny memes and challenges in 60 seconds or less. It's a community dedicated to evangelizing and defending the faith as well as a place for networking and recreation, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, as more young people are seeking connection and answers in a particularly divisive year.

Even religious men and women have gotten in on the trend, using the time in quarantine to start posting more content and engage openly with followers: such as "viral" priests Fr. Frankie Cicero of Life Starts Here Ministries in Arizona and Simon Esshaki, a Chaldean priest in San Diego.

Even the Netherlands-based Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart have nearly 243,000 followers; their comment sections are filled with people from other faiths thanking the nuns for their entertaining and wholesome content.

(In a @carmeldjc video from July, when a user asked, "What do you think about the LGBT community?" The nuns' simple reply was, "God loves everybody.")

"Catholic TikTok" is filled with diverse creators; they are mostly teens and young adults posting videos — church teachings and memes, real-life struggles and news takes — often with a filter, set to music or a track. Trending hashtags like #catholic and #catholicsoftiktokhave more than 380 million views.

@faithfullylanahow's self isolation going for y'all? ##fyp ##catholic ##christian ##jesus ##adoration ##eucharist ##veiling ##catholiclife ##rosary ##lovejesuschrist

♬ ricoco bicc aesthetic - Tik Toker

Those hashtags tend to attract TikTokers who identify as "rad-trad" or "traditionally Catholic," said 16-year-old Chris Karroum, who has more than 6,000 followers for his humour. Karroum said he started attending traditional Latin Mass after learning about it on the app. Continue reading