World Youth Day 2011

[gwyn]

What a multitude of witnesses there was (were?). Sadly little if any mention on our glorious home-grown liberal news media. I suppose it would stick in their collective throat to say anything good about the Youth Day or the Church without yet another harp on child abuse. One and a half million intelligent youngsters who have a reverence for the sacraments and the Holy Father probably makes them want to spit.

The choirs did a thoroughly good job I thought, at least that which I could hear behind the unrelenting commentary provided by EWTN and Vatican Radio.

Good stuff nonetheless.

[Nick Baty]

Interesting stuff, Gwyn. You say the media is "liberal" and then describe them as "illiberal". All depends on your starting point.
When I was at the BBC we were described as
• pro-Catholic and anti-Catholic
• pro-Islam and anti-Islam
• pro-establishment and anti-establishment
• left-wing and right wing
• nothern-centric and southern-centric
• homophobic and yet in the pocket of a gay quango
Yet I don't remember doing anything differently from one day to the next.

On the subject of World Youth Day, I found I couldn't get away from it – not that I wanted to – but it seemed to be everywhere.

[gwyn]

I think we'd be struggling to find evidence to describe Aunty Beeb as pro-catholic these days Nick, love he as we do.

[Nick Baty]

And yet that's how many viewers saw her!
Endless complaints about coverage of Pope, Cardinal etc.
As I say, all depends on your starting point!

[gwyn]

S'pose.

[NorthernTenor]

It must have seemed like a good idea to concentrate on the small number of protestors and ignore the million and half young catholic pilgrims, but when even the Guardian raises its eyebrows you can’t but wish it had been done with greater subtlety. After all, we really don’t want people to notice that this Pope - with his reactionary views on liturgy and liturgical music – got such an enthusiastic welcome from so many young catholics, do we?

[Calum Cille]

One of the news reports criticised was that of the BBC's Today reporter Sarah Rainsford, currently online at the following webpage.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/ne ... 568144.stm

It is entitled "A Big Circus of Christianity" despite not actually naming the event being reported on. "This event is clearly pitched at young people ...," Sarah cleverly deduces. All her vox pop material contained comment relating to opposition: opposition to the event in Spain, or opposition to Catholics/Catholicism in England and Ireland. Yes, providing a balance of social viewpoints is a good thing, except when you title a piece, "A Big Circus of Christianity," the words of a protester against the event. This signifies that reporting on criticism of the event is being viewed as more significant to report upon than the actual event, which is even mentioned in the Wikipedia article referenced below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... in_history

Ms Rainsford was very good at getting 'her' perception of Catholicism aired via questions like, "Is it hard to be Catholic in England ...?" to the first young man and, "is that quite hard to do ...," to the other (read, I think it might be hard to be Catholic in England and I want both of you to make that the news for my programme). Only two young men were interviewed and, inexplicably, both speak about opposition to the church at home, and if one of them fails to make the required mention of abuse scandals by name for her, she's there to put the words into his mouth. The word 'scandal' was used three times in the report even though the protesters were complaining about the use of public money.

Granted, it was a very short piece and must lack analysis to some degree. However, the issue of the possibly disingenuous nature of the arguments of many of the protesters (secularist, feminist, gay and *beep*, alternative Christian and leftist groups) should at least have been mentioned in order for the listener to be fully informed. We all know what the Catholic Church is. We don't all know who these protesters are and whether any pretext for protest against the Catholic Church would be as useful to them as any other pretext.

I haven't so far heard any mention in this context of a prior attempt in Madrid at Easter by the Madrileno Association of Atheists and Freethinkers to hold a "demonstration to promote atheist ideas" on the Thursday of Holy Week. For atheists and certain other groups within European society, protests at religious gatherings involving large numbers of people in truth need no more reason to happen than the mere fact that religious people hold their beliefs and meet. In other words, the celebration of religion in public is becoming itself a political target. Is this not newsworthy?

Had the report been longer, I would have loved to have heard whether the interviewee presenting the ludicrous financial argument would also oppose another large and costly event, the Olympic Games, being held in Madrid during a period of economic difficulty. I presume she wouldn't because the Olympic games would be for everyone, not just Catholics. Would she protest against any other state visits, then? Would she protest at any other big Catholic gathering paid out of Catholic funds?

[presbyter]

Just in case we are discussing the WYD Liturgy and Music

http://player.rv.va/vaticanplayer.asp?l ... A_8NJEN6PY

Try the refrain Gloria (in Latin) about 50 minutes in........ and the Celtic Alleluia shows its global status as a Gospel Acclamation of choice.