When "60 Minutes" lined up three American Catholic Cardinals who had been dropping angry "open letters" on President Donald Trump, CBS reporter Norah O'Donnell mustered the audacity to claim, "their candor surprised us." No, they knew precisely what they were orchestrating — another carefully edited hit job on Trump.
Modern liberals, by their nature, are alienated from traditional Christianity, as exemplified by the classic front-page Washington Post phrase about Jerry Falwell's followers: "poor, uneducated, and easy to command."
Liberal TV networks find organized religion useful — when it helps sell the liberal view. They want to add the moral authority of organized religion to their causes. They will celebrate in this case that Pope Leo is not a "pundit" or a "politician," which is true to a point. But it turns into a pundit-palooza.
This American pope surely knows that all his speeches, interviews and tweets are going to be used to score points by political actors, and he knows that he doesn't have to name Trump for everyone to guess he's calling out Trump.
When a pope speaks out about poverty or pollution or climate, our elitist media rush to publicize it. When the Catholic Church vigorously opposes abortion or transgenderism, then they are either mocked or ignored — but mostly ignored. So you might think Pope Leo is a liberal, but it depends on which issue is being discussed. They only want to present his opinion when he agrees with their opinion. If he speaks out against radical Islam or Christian persecution in Africa, they ignore him, so Americans might think he's said nothing about it.
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The "60 Minutes" gang could just as easily find a spokesman like Bishop Robert Barron, who is very popular among American Catholics. But he's on Trump's Religious Liberty Commission, so he's automatically an unpalatable choice. Leftist journalists call him a "MAGA Bishop." That's like categorizing the cardinals CBS interviewed as the "Biden Cardinals."
In this case, they're seeking to undermine the moral authority of a more conservative church leader. The journalists who sneer at a "MAGA Bishop" are the same hacks who describe Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi as "devout Catholics." It's all about political spin.
In recent days, they have elevated the Pope and the Church's anti-Trump leaders to some sort of holy ground where they should not be criticized by Trump or by J.D. Vance, that they're only digging themselves a hole by daring to disagree. Stephen Colbert scolded Vance like he needed to go to the confessional for criticizing the Pope. When the Pope was seen as a staunch right-winger -- like Pope Benedict XIV -- the media and the comedians ripped him all the time.
The media's tendency to elevate the religious Left was also demonstrated by a CNN interview with Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C. She lauded Pope Leo for his consistent message of peace and "calling for respect and dignity in human discourse." Seconds later, CNN played a video of Baptist pastor/Sen. Raphael Warnock on MS NOW ripping Vance for suggesting the Pope should be "careful" on political matters: "This is how despots and wannabe despots talk. This is how fascists talk." Is that respect and dignity in discourse? Budde could only happily gush to CNN: "As Raphael Warnock said so well, this is what moral courage looks like."
CBS and CNN always find "moral courage" in anyone denouncing Trump -- although this chatter is quite easy to uncork without challenge, and the rewards for forwarding that "anti-fascist" spin are blatantly obvious. Advancing the Left is "courageous." Debating the Left makes you a "wannabe despot."
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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