The Media Turns On The Pope

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1. Yes, interesting. Mudslinging by the corporate media only increases one’s suspicion of them—as if it were not great enough already—and most certainly not of the Holy Father.

   As regards the aggression of some American Protestants, it always surprises me and I find it very unlovely. I was actually brought up Anglican, and I never encountered anything like it in England. I think it was there to some extent two or three generations ago, but it’s something I’ve never come across. People might have said, “We don’t do such and such,” and left it at that. Anglicanism is an odd beast, though, because while there’s always been a High Church, the Broad Church and Low Church have probably been more numerous and influential at times—at least until the “Anglo-Catholic” revival of pre-Reformation practices and theology of the 19th Century Oxford Movement.

   I think a good impression of how Low Church Anglicans could be in the past is given by the Colonel in M. R. James’ short story “O Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad”. But most contemporary Anglicans don’t seem particularly suspicious of Catholics and if anything tend to admire piety in traditional Catholic (and Orthodox) societies where it comes up into view in films or travelogues or artworks even if they think vaguely that these people do things we wouldn’t.

   I don’t think what the English call Nonconformists—Protestant sects like Methodists and Baptists—are particularly hostile either. Again, I think it would be a case of “not our thing”—as they would also say as regards the Church of England—but not something they would get bent out of shape about. That’s not necessarily true across the UK. Some Scots and Northern Irish Presbyterians seem to retain an inherited hatred from an earlier age—though probably only some of them. Glasgow Rangers soccer fans painted a mural celebrating the death of Francis … and Glasgow Celtic fans painted over it. If they’d only known many Catholics were not happy with Francis at all and regarded him as hardly Catholic (although they don’t wish anyone dead, of course). But then this wasn’t a theological act: it was tribal.

   In England, though, no—Catholics are probably admired if anything, although not well understood. I suspect it would the same across Europe. The reflexive aggression seems an American phenomenon.

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