Dumbing down the message

This last week, several blogs and news pieces have looked at how the mainstream media has tended to chop up Pope Benedict's homilies and messages into a few eye-catching quotes and sound bites for mass consumption. One of the most recent examples was the so called 'attack on homosexuals', when in actual fact, the Holy Father in his homily addressed a variety of activities that harm the family that included (yes, he mentioned it) homosexuality. Of course, items such as *giggle*masturbation*giggle* are just not 'sexy' enough for the media to report on, so they label the Holy Father's comments as an attack on gays and leave it at that.

CNS takes a look at this issue. A couple of interesting excerpts:

[...]
As one veteran wire service reporter recently lamented in the Vatican press office, the new pope is hard to write about because short citations don't do justice to his complex arguments. You can't just cherry-pick quotes.

That was especially true when the pope spoke about the family to a packed Basilica of St. John Lateran. His 3,000-word speech was a seminar, not a tirade.
[...]

Interestingly, Pope Benedict said little about specific church teachings on these issues. His goal was not to insist on Catholic doctrine, but to convince with arguments that have inspired the doctrine -- no doubt realizing that his audience was the wider society as well as the diocesan leaders sitting in front of him.

The lengthy text was so rich that one archbishop, rereading it carefully the next day, remarked the pope had given "a theology lesson on the family." It was a challenging talk even for pastoral experts.
[...]

Read the complete article Not many sound bites: New pope's discourses defy simplistic headlines from Catholic News Service.