Vatican Media Watch
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, Aug. 4 — An Italian cardinal and a Vatican official have suggested Madonna — the U.S. pop singer, that is — should be excommunicated for re-enacting the crucifixion in her new stage show, UPI reported.
In her current Confessions Tour, the singer has a scene in which she wears a crown of thorns and appears to be hung on a cross.
Cardinal Ersilio Tonini, former archbishop of Ravenna-Cervia, called the scene “an act of open hostility. It is nothing short of a scandal and an attempt to generate publicity,” he added.
Bishop Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Apostolic Signature, said the show “represents the rotten fruit of secularism and the absurdity of evil.”
CHICAGO
TRIBUNE, Aug. 7 — More than 10,000 feet above the
Though few
Americans know it, the
“Our work is to be good scientists as well as good Catholics,” said Father Christopher Corbally, the vice director of the Vatican Observatory Research Group, who was giving a Church group a tour of the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope one morning earlier this summer.
“That’s why the
Church chose this science, not something like medicine, originally, Father
Corbally said. “But the commitment to it over the years has endured because of
a desire to create a bridge between good science and good religion.”
Catholic Media Should Seek and Transmit the Truth
CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY, Aug. 8 — The secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said Catholic media need to be different from secular news and should seek and transmit the truth of the faith, the wire service reported.
In an interview with Polish Catholic weekly Niedziela, Archbishop Angelo Amato said secular media often choose to transmit manipulations of the Church’s teaching rather than what it is truly saying.
“The media does not
publish the whole texts of the magisterium. The problem is that as a rule they
choose [certain] points, often secondary, that can cause polemics or scandals,”
the archbishop said. “One should admit
that we very often have the impression that we are living in some artificial
virtual reality that is created by media workers and various opinion-forming
people.”
The archbishop added, “The Gospel is not a creation of the human mind but God’s
message concerning the reality of man and the universe.”
Catholic media should remain true to their name and not report stories so as to create doubts in the minds of believers, as regards magisterial teachings, he said. By leaving arguments open-ended in the same way that the secular media do, “there is an impression that the commands of the magisterium are only opinions which one can agree with or not.”
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- August 20-26, 2006