Sign the pledge!

The envelope— plain and white— was neatly addressed to me but had no return address. Should I have been surprised by what fluttered out when I slit it open?

Given the current scandal in the news surrounding sexual crimes—sins—by priests around the country, receiving one of Chick Publications’ noxious little anti-Catholic tracts in the mail should have been expected. It’s happened before.

This one, arriving in an envelope with a suburban postmark, was the usual tripe: “Are Roman Catholics Christians?” The crudely-drawn pamphlet quickly concedes—for a variety of reasons, most of which conveniently ignore fact, tradition, biblical scholarship and just plain common sense—that we are not.

It’s foolish and a bit dangerous to regard such insults as the actions of a small-minded few.

When the church becomes a focus for bad news, as it is now, such things get a fresh boost. There is little disagreement that anti-Catholicism lies just beneath the surface of American society. Father Andrew Greeley has called distrust (or strong dislike) of Catholics the last “acceptable” bias.

True, an acquaintance is unlikely to slip you a tract like the one I received, or openly sass your beliefs, but the bias is there, just under the surface.

The media don’t exactly help, either, often gleefully pointing out how the Christian values the church proclaims—like opposing gratuitous sex and violence—rub against the grain of current culture. And then when some in the church violate those values, as in the current scandal, well, hoo-boy, what a field day!

Negative depictions of Catholics, our faith and values are another reason to support the annual U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Renewing the Mind of the Media Pledge Campaign.” The event in parishes of the Archdiocese of Chicago this year, set by Cardinal George, is May 18-19.

The campaign calls on Catholics around the nation to urge both public policymakers and advertisers to use their influence to make a principled stand against gratuitous portrayals of sex and violence in entertainment and news media. (See the advertisement on Page 26.)

As part of its effort to encourage and promote family-friendly media, The Catholic New World has offered for several months an enlarged “media and culture” section of the newspaper with movie and TV reviews, book reviews and looks at segments of our culture with a critical eye.

Bottom line: If we want to improve the values of the media (and perhaps their understanding and portrayal of Catholics), we have to become involved. Sign the pledge.

In a sense, simply agreeing to support the values of Jesus in a society which too often fails to reflect those values is getting off easy.

Consider the 12 men to be ordained to the priesthood this month for the Archdiocese of Chicago whose stories are told on Pages 16-17. Some might believe this isn’t a good time to think about becoming a Catholic priest. Indeed, when writers for The Catholic New World asked each of these men—from diverse ethnic, cultural, ages and career paths—how they felt entering a ministry which seems to be under attack, the responses were almost unanimous: excited, eager, faithful and hopeful.

There is no question that they—perhaps like each of us—will be subjected to bias, discrimination, even hate, at some time during their ministries as Catholic priests. Someone may even slip them a pamphlet which questions the calling to which they’ve given their lives.

Surely they—and ourselves—will endure violence and gratuitous sex and exploitation of Catholic Christian values in entertainment and news media.

All of which is just another good reason: sign the pledge!

Tom Sheridan
Editor and General Manager