the Hype

Do not be afraid little flock, for the Father has chosen gladly to give you the Kingdom. Jesus Christ

Have you ever had someone take everything you say and twist it to make it mean something else?

I have.

I once had a family member who did this, and she made my life a living hell. There. Was. No. Winning.

I’ve also had little armies of advocate ants crawling all over me for years. Most of these advocate ants were (back when I favored legal abortion) pro life, or, (now that I’m pro life myself) pro abortion. However, these two warring camps are not the sole suppliers of advocate ants.

I’ve been attacked a number of times by what I call “the Downtown Boy’s Club,” which is to say the star chamber for the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. I’ve also had quite a few zings from the Oklahoma Medical Association and other advocate ants who were trying to stop me from doing whatever I was doing and saying whatever I was saying by micro-searching my every comment for something they could use to harm me.

I didn’t worry overmuch about their micro searches because I knew one simple fact: If they didn’t find what they wanted in my actual verbiage, they’d make it up anyway.

I learned long ago that, over time, what they say you said stops being the story under the weight of what you actually do. If you are consistent and if you walk the walk, these things have a way of dying on their lethal little vines.

Of course, that’s tough for a politician who always faces another election not so far off. They may not have the time for the truth to win out. I was able to do it because I have the ability and the willingness to go directly to the people I represent and talk to them about these things; that and the fact that I was doing the things that made folks like the Downtown Boy’s Club mad at me for the people of my district and those good people knew it and were grateful for it.

I suppose it would be a lot tougher for a politician who was getting roughed up for something that went against the interests of the people he or she represented. That could indeed be political death.

How does this apply to the Pope? Just this: They’re doing the same thing to him.

Pope Francis is not saying anything new. What we’re witnessing is media blackmail of a sort.

They’ve done it to a lot of people in the past, and it has worked. The press constructs an alternate view of reality and then praises the hapless clown they are manipulating for conforming to their storyline. This is a Faustian bargain, akin to what Satan did when he offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if He would bow down to him.

Accept our scenario the press offers, and we will lionize you and praise you and make you the idol of millions of stupid people. It is incredible how many people fall for this and go along with these narratives that are imposed on them and begin to live out the lie. Politicians, celebrities, and especially young music stars, reshape themselves along the lines of the myth about themselves that the media created to get ratings and sell copies.

The press has been doing this with the popes for a while now. Pope Benedict XVI was cast as a dour, uncaring and cold type, all about the rule of the “thou shalt nots” and not at all about the love of Christ. That was, of course, a lie. The Pope they miscast this way wrote encyclicals titled “God is love.” He spoke out for the environment and peace. He said everything that Pope Francis has said.

The difference is the spin.

Already the press is beginning to become disgruntled that yet another pope refuses to fall for their bribe of press-generated public admiration and re-write the Gospels to suit the amoral morality they are pushing on the world.

Elizabeth Scalia and Mark Shea wrote about the Associated Press reporter who accused Pope Francis of being “inconsistent” because he told a group of doctors who were gathered at the Vatican that they must not perform abortions. Major news outlets have solemnly reported that Pope Francis has not spoken out against abortion, which is a dead flat lie.

It must be maddening for them to deal with someone who will not perform according to their script. After all, they’ve got the whole Western world, or at least the part of it they write about, jumping around and re-writing itself to conform to their bizarro view of things.

These people are hermetically sealed in their own prejudices. They do not go out and find stories and report the news. They wait for the “news” to come to them, and then they spin it according to their pre-written scripts.

They are not journalists.

They are also not believable.

Public Catholic reader FW Ken kindly put together a list of other bloggers who have taken the trouble to compare Pope Francis’ statements with Pope Benedict’s. I also added a few links to similar deliberate misinterpretations of papal statements from the past. Look them over. What you will find is that the papacy is consistently Catholic from pope to pope. More to the point, you will find that this pope is being given the “treatment” by the press. You can find these things here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

My advice is to stay calm brothers and sisters. Trust God, follow the Pope and be faithful to Christ in your own lives. Stay the course, and don’t worry. In the long run, (and God is always about the long run) the truth inevitably wins out.