Coverage

Jonathan V. Last at Galley Slaves posts.

I’m sitting listening to a Paula Zahn-led package about the Pope on CNN. It’s about how terrible and divisive John Paul II’s teachings on women have been. She keeps making the point that this Pope refuses to let women be priests, but she says it like it’s some crackpot idea he dreamed up on his own.

Somewhere in the distance, Roger Ailes is smiling.

Yesterday Domenico Bettinelli posted:

I’ve been watching the Fox News coverage of the Pope’s demise all day and it has been uniformly respectful and praising of the Pope, even showing long stretches of the Rosary in St. Peter’s Square. I was curious how CNN was covering it and flipped over for a second.

There was Christiane Amanpour, and I’m not kidding, she was saying, “There are millions of Catholics who disagree with the very, very conservative views of this Pope. Many women were disappointed at not being empowered to be able to join the Church [I presume she meant ordination.]”

Click.

Back to Fox News.

I wonder if CNN will get Sinéad O’Connor on so she can rip up some more pictures of the Pope?

So far Fox’s coverage has been pretty good with people like Jimmy Akin, Philip Lawler, Fr. Sullivan from the Institute of Carmelite Studies (an excellent source for good translations of books by Carmelite saints and scholarly studies) and others from the Church’s hierarchy. Though I could have done without Cardinal Mahoney and his boilerplate comments – can we say "Teaching moment." Though to be fair, Morton Kondracke on Fox News also bashed the Pope for being too conservative and not ordaining women. Of course it is not surprising that non-Catholics want to dictate theology on this subject when some Catholics do the same.

Yesterday Hugh Hewitt on his radio show opened up the lines to Catholics only and there were many wonderful stories of how the Pope had touched individual lives. Hugh who is an ex-Catholic is definitely not a bitter one (he says he fell away because of the actions of the Bishops) and has had many Catholics on his show (including Fr. Neuhaus this week).