An elderly Catholic prelate was recently asked what he believes to be the secret of a peaceful retirement. After a few moments of reflection, His Lordship replied: ‘Try not to watch television. And if you do, never watch the news’.
The Provost must admit that he has a singular weakness for television. Were it not for the difficulty of negotiating the plethora of remote control devices required to switch on a modern set and find a watchable channel, and for his sacerdotal duties, he could happily spend days on end engrossed in re-runs of It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Are You Being Served?, The Good Life and, best of all, The Les Dawson Show. He has, however, no temptation at all to the watch the news, and made a conscious decision to avoid it altogether at the beginning of the Coronavirus panic when the mainstream news services, and one broadcasting corporation in particular, eschewed reasoned caution and common sense in favour of a frenzied panic-mongering that seemed positively calculated to induce mass psychosis and hysteria.
It has been said that we live in a ‘post truth society’. Last month, on Gaudete Sunday, we had the great joy of welcoming a dear friend back to the Oratory after what had been a considerable hiatus, when His Eminence George Cardinal Pell returned to celebrate a Pontifical High Mass. Anyone who followed the trial of His Eminence in 2018 in Melbourne, a travesty of justice which led to a good man approaching his 80th birthday languishing in jail in solitary confinement for 404 days, will, or should, have realised just how pervasive and pernicious the bias, not to say the diabolical mendacity, of the media can be. The good Cardinal was to a large extent the victim of trial by media, which, with one or two honourable exceptions, treated the grotesque allegations against ‘the defendant’ as if their veracity were a foregone conclusion. One painful aspect of the saga was witnessing how many decent and intelligent, but it has to be said foolish, people were taken in by a media narrative which, even at its most bombastically vitriolic, could not disguise the inconsistencies and absence of substantial evidence presented by the prosecution. One can only hope and pray that, realising how misled they allowed themselves to be in this case, those who were bamboozled by what they read and listened to will now have learnt never to allow the propaganda and dishonesty of a generally biased media to form their world view, or indeed to colour their opinions on any important issue of the day. All too often, if we read about something in the newspapers, hear it on the wireless, or watch it on the television, and it concerns something about which we happen to know the ins and outs, we soon realise that what we are being told is pretty much the exact opposite of the truth.
If we wish to make a good New Year's resolution, perhaps we should consider taking the advice of the venerable prelate mentioned at the beginning of this letter, and boycotting the news – and especially those news sources that stoke social anxieties and would have us living in a constant state of fear and suspicion of our neighbours. As Catholics, we have a source of news that is infallibly trustworthy, and this is the Good News of the Gospel. On the Feast of the Epiphany, we have great cause for celebration, as we commemorate the manifestation of our Incarnate God to the Gentiles in the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of Our Lord in the Jordan, which is His promise to us of our participation in the life of the Blessed Trinity, and the marriage at Cana at which water is transformed into wine in a sign of Transubstantiation.
Perhaps, despite all of this, at the beginning of this new year we find it hard to summon up much joy. Restrictions which we were told twenty months ago would only last for two weeks seem to have evolved into an endless cycle, and to have become the occasion for the roll-out of a surveillance structure which Herod and Chairman Mao might both have envied. Meanwhile, in a Church whose mission and credibility in modern times have been hobbled by abuses of power and betrayals of trust, many Catholics struggling to be faithful to the Gospel feel beleaguered and despised by the very shepherds from whom they might have hoped to find encouragement and fatherly solicitude. We must not, however, allow any of this to disturb our peace unduly, or to spoil our rejoicing in the Mysteries of the Epiphany which so luminously announce the salvation that is in our midst. If God is allowing His faithful to be sifted, and permitting His Mystical Body to suffer, then this can only be for a purpose known to the Divine Mind. We must trust in His Providence and unite whatever ills we must endure with the Passion of Our Lord. The fake news that has so much of the world in its grip must ultimately be destroyed in the light of the Gospel, just as surely as the Resurrection followed the Crucifixion. At the beginning of this new year, let us immerse ourselves in the Good News which strengthens us for whatever battles lie ahead.
Father Julian Large