COLUMN ONE : Missing the Pope’s Message : The media’s ignorance of religion and their zeal for conflict often skew coverage of John Paul II.

Eighteen months ago, the Vatican released a 179-page letter--an encyclical--from Pope John Paul II to the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. It was a complex, tightly reasoned condemnation of moral relativism and situational ethics--a call for strict adherence to the principle that some acts are just plain wrong (“intrinsically evil”) and cannot be justified by extenuating circumstances, no matter how compelling.

The encyclical--Veritatis Splendor (Latin for Splendor of Truth)--is widely regarded as the most important statement of John Paul’s 16-year pontificate, even more important than last month’s Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life).

Veritatis Splendor was six years in preparation, and long before its release, global media speculation focused on the sex-related strictures it was expected to invoke. Once it was out--and on front pages worldwide--much of the media continued to focus on its (presumed) sexual emphasis.

But Veritatis Splendor specifically mentioned sexual behavior in only one paragraph. Only twice--once in passing--did it mention birth control.

So why did ABC’s “World News Tonight” devote most of its encyclical report to the sexual issues? Why did the Boston Globe say the encyclical “largely centers on the birth control issue”? Why did Colman McCarthy in the Washington Post dismiss Veritatis Splendor as “a 179-page message ordering Catholics not to use condoms”?

The most obvious explanation is that sex sells. Most journalists know that it’s much easier to interest editors, readers and viewers in a sex story than it is to try to parse this Pope’s scholarly, often obscure and turgid prose.

But many critics say the simple proposition that sex is sexier than religion exposes just one of many structural flaws in the news media. They say these flaws--a propensity for sensationalism, conflict and oversimplification and an ignorance of (and often hostility toward) religion in general and Catholicism in particular--have skewed coverage not only of Veritatis Splendor but of John Paul II’s entire papacy.

They may well be right.

Certainly, a careful examination of media coverage--and interviews in the United States and in Rome with more than 100 theologians, journalists, church officials and church critics--makes it clear that, with a few notable exceptions, the tone and thrust of papal coverage, especially in the United States, have been largely negative for several years at least.

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Charges (and countercharges) about how fairly, accurately and thoroughly the media cover the Pope might best be left to theologians and journalism professors to debate--and to historians to settle--were it not for this Pope’s unique impact on the world, an impact that extends far beyond his church’s 960 million members.

Kenneth Woodward, longtime religion writer for Newsweek, calls John Paul II, who will be 75 next month, “one of the great figures of the 20th Century.”

The Pope’s intervention on behalf of the Solidarity union in Poland helped trigger the fall of communism, as former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev acknowledged in 1992. “All that has happened in East Europe over these last few years would not have been possible without the presence of the Pope,” he wrote in the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

That is but one of John Paul’s achievements. He has attacked not only communism but capitalism and the Mafia--all on their home turf--and although John XXIII and Paul VI took the initial steps toward making peace between Catholics and Jews, John Paul has taken by far the largest steps of any Pope. He has tried, both substantively and symbolically, to atone for Catholicism’s almost 2,000 years of persecution and disparagement of Jews.

By vigorously condemning anti-Semitism, by establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, by becoming the first Pope to visit a synagogue and by hosting a Holocaust memorial concert in the Vatican, he has made an “about-face for . . . the papacy,” in the words of Margaret Steinfels, editor of the Catholic magazine Commonweal.

In another about-face, John Paul has directed the College of Cardinals to prepare for the third millennium by re-examining church actions over the centuries so it may admit any sins it has committed.

Fluent in at least half a dozen languages, comfortable in several others, a former factory worker, poet, professor and actor, John Paul is as intriguing as he is important--”one of the more complex and fascinating figures of the 20th Century,” as Garry Wills, a historian and journalist, wrote in an often-critical review of “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” the Pope’s recent best-selling book.

John Paul is fascinating in large measure because he is a quasi-mystical, profoundly reflective theologian and philosopher who nevertheless confronts quite publicly some of the most controversial issues of everyday life: Sex. Power. The rights of women, workers, poor people and the politically disenfranchised.

His stands on many of these issues, no matter how spiritual his objective or how abstruse his prose, are inevitably reduced to their simplest terms in the media.

This is not to suggest that all coverage of the Pope is bad. It is not. In the case of Veritatis Splendor, the Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post carried stories that accurately reflected the overall scope of the Pope’s concern about moral relativism and his repetition and broadening of the Second Vatican Council’s condemnation of acts ranging from genocide to slavery to treating workers as “mere instruments of profit”.

Stories by these news organizations--and a few others--touched on what the New York Times called the encyclical’s “unmistakable subtext referring to sexual themes,” but they put that material in context and noted, as the Los Angeles Times story put it, “The papal letter goes far deeper than that.”

But these stories were exceptions to the rule--on Veritatis Splendor and on other papal coverage as well.

This is especially true in the United States, which has historically been more obsessed by and more ambivalent about matters sexual than, for example, the countries of western Europe. The United States also has the strongest feminist movement and, as a result, is the country where there is the most criticism--and coverage--of the Pope’s opposition to abortion and the ordination of women and of his rejection of gender-neutral language in English translations of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and of the church’s official Catechism.

Peter Steinfels, a longtime religion writer now on leave from the New York Times, says the American media generally emphasize the subjects they think they know best--sex and politics--regardless of context; they force even the most nuanced of papal issues into those and other predictable but not necessarily applicable categories--liberals vs. conservatives, traditionalists vs. modernizers, authoritarians vs. free spirits.

Steinfels is one of several people interviewed for this story who said that coverage of the Pope is sometimes further colored by this country’s historic, underlying anti-Catholicism--and by the tendency of many reporters to identify with dissenters who challenge John Paul’s hard-line stands on such issues as abortion rights and the ordination of women.

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Good reporters try to not let their personal views unfairly influence their coverage; most are generally successful. But the liberal / progressive culture in most big-city newsrooms--combined with most journalists’ innate suspicion of and antagonism toward people of power and authority--can sometimes, if only subconsciously, affect what they write. A Los Angeles Times study in 1990 clearly demonstrated that this has been true of the media’s coverage of abortion, and many believe it is also true of coverage of the Pope.

Most journalists have a “bias built in . . . liberal Democratic ideals and principles . . . that influence their looking at issues,” says Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, head of the nation’s largest archdiocese.

It may not be surprising that a cardinal closely identified with the Pope would take this position. But Newsweek’s Woodward also says one should not “underestimate . . . the importance” of the views of many journalists on such issues as abortion and the ordination of women in coloring the media’s view of the Pope.

Although most journalists deny this, Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, probably the most respected high-ranking critic of the Pope within the U.S. church, says he senses a “love-hate relationship” between the secular media and the Pope.

“It’s almost as if the secular press has an agenda against which they evaluate him,” he says. While the media are critical of the Pope on sex-related issues, Weakland says, when John Paul stays away from those issues, “especially if he talks about communism, injustices, human rights abuses in Central and South America, poverty . . . then the secular press is very positive.”

In fact, a few critics say the media have been too un critical of John Paul on many issues. They say the media have not subjected him to the kind of rigorous scrutiny that his global stature calls for. Instead, they say, the media give him unwarranted big play on unimportant news--his annual holiday messages and other proclamations, relatively minor injuries, and his world travels.

In covering his trips abroad in particular, says Joan Connell, editor of Religious News Service in Washington, the media have treated him like “the Pillsbury Doughboy of God--’He’s cute, he’s dressed in a white robe, he’s different, everybody loves him.’ It’s all very happy-face and superficial and doesn’t go very far.”

This was often true in the heady, early days of John Paul’s papacy, when he was a novelty--the first non-Italian Pope in 456 years, the youngest in 132 years, an unprecedented traveler, a courageous foe of communism.

“People were so amazed at his charisma, the level of energy that he exhibited,” says Cecile Holmes, religion editor of the Houston Chronicle. “We’re talking about a globe-trotting, skiing, playwriting, kid-hugging Pope. . . . I think the press was fascinated.”

When John Paul spent a week in the United States in 1979, a year after he became Pope, “The press went belly-up,” Wills wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review. Stories were “adoring . . . giddy . . . embarrassingly . . . perfervid.”

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But that tone has shifted. Coverage of (and commentary on) the Pope has been increasingly skeptical and critical, especially since the collapse of communism in 1989.

“His rejection of change in the role of women, along with his opposition to abortion and contraception, is causing some believers to question the direction of his papacy and whether his best fights are behind him,” said a typical story, in the Washington Post, last fall. “Today, his crucial role in the defeat of communism in his native Poland seems a distant memory.”

Rodolfo Brancoli, who spent 17 years in New York and Washington as a correspondent for the Italian newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, describes the Pope as “a victim of the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

Brancoli, now a columnist for the Corriere in Rome, is not alone in suggesting that as long as the Pope was fighting communism, he was partially sheltered from Western media criticism over his views on sexual issues. But once he was “no longer needed in the crusade (against) the evil empire,” Brancoli says, his escalating criticism of Western materialism and moral laxity made the secular American media “very uncomfortable.”

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The Pope is not without his detractors, of course. Many say that as good as his pontificate has been for the world, it has been calamitous for the church. He has created enemies in and for the church--and in the larger secular world as well--both with his punishment of those who dissent from what he sees as essential church teachings and with his equally adamant stands on the “sexy six” hot-button topics that attract the most media attention (abortion, birth control, ordination of women, priestly celibacy, divorce / remarriage and homosexual activity).

Some of the Pope’s most vigorous critics are Catholics--clergymen, theologians and journalists who write for Catholic publications. But even some of these dissenters--openly critical of the Pope--often find secular media coverage superficial, biased and / or inadequate. Father Andrew Greeley, a best-selling author and a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, says flatly that he thinks John Paul has been “a disaster.”

Greeley says the Pope has used his power arbitrarily in recent years to undermine the authority of individual bishops, who have historically been presumed to have “direct authority from God to teach in (their) local area.” But Greeley laments the media’s “orgy of anti-Catholicism” during the Pope’s visit to Denver for World Youth Day in 1993.

Father Richard McBrien, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and a frequent critic of the Pope, goes even further than Greeley in criticizing John Paul’s treatment of dissenting bishops and his selection of new bishops.

The Pope, he says, has packed the world episcopate with the “pastorally incompetent, ideologically driven. . . . His primary concern is not who’s going to be the best pastor . . . the most sensitive . . . the one who can exercise the most leadership. . . . Instead, his criterion is who is going to be unswervingly loyal to whatever line comes out of the Holy See.”

“The media talk very little about that,” McBrien says.

Defenders of the Pope--and some journalists--counter that it is only natural for a leader to surround himself with people who are loyal to him and who agree with him on fundamental principles.

“A Pope would be foolish if he didn’t pick men for the highest positions in the church with whom he felt a sympathy and an agreement,” says Newsweek’s Woodward. “Would you think that (in) any other organization, the (top) guy would pick people who deliberately were antithetical to his thought?”

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Papal supporters insist that John Paul consults widely before making any major decision, but they point out that he is the final authority--the Pope, the Supreme Pontiff, the ultimate interpreter/arbiter of Christ’s teachings. Bishops and others who criticize the Pope’s doctrinal teachings do not seem to realize that “the doctrine is not his. It’s the Lord’s,” says Cardinal Andrzej Maria Deskur, who has known the Pope since they were students in the Krakow Seminary in 1945.

Bishops and lay Catholics who argue that they should be allowed to say and do what they want, regardless of the church’s official position, misapprehend what it means to be a Catholic, says Michael Novak, an author and resident scholar in religion and public policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Such dissent is “one way of being Christian, but it is not the Catholic way,” Novak says. Dissenters “might as well be Protestant.”

The Pope has dismissed dissenters as “cafeteria Catholics,” people who pick which church teachings they are willing to follow and which they want to ignore.

But papal critics contend that dissent is a time-honored tradition in the church. Greeley argues that “Catholicism is not an exclusivist sect with rigid boundaries. It is a rich, complex, diversified, pluralistic heritage.”

Greeley and other papal critics concede that John Paul welcomes the intellectual challenge of open discussion with those who disagree, but they complain that when it comes to decision-making, he is authoritarian, not collegial.

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As proof of this, they cite in particular the Vatican’s rejection late last year of the gender-neutral Bible approved by the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Pope’s insistence that his ban on the ordination of women be “definitively held by all the church’s faithful”--no further discussion allowed.

Clearly, there is profound disagreement within the church about some aspects of Catholic doctrine and about the Pope’s enforcement of that doctrine. When the Pope issues his various strictures and prohibitions, his spokesman and supporters say he is simply speaking as the conservator of the faith, with little leeway for personal change or modernization. “The church,” John Paul has said, “has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination to women.”

But critics say the Pope is merely invoking precedent and tradition to justify imposing his own rigid interpretation on anachronistic tenets that should be read in light of contemporary conditions.

Who’s right?

How one answers that question largely governs what dissent is permissible for bishops and lay Catholics and what dissent strikes at unassailable matters of faith.

Regardless of which side is right, Greeley and McBrien, among others, complain that while the media often sensationalize the complaints of lay dissenters, they have--except for an occasional story--largely ignored the more important question of the Pope’s relationship with the bishops and others in the church hierarchy.

No one denies that the Pope’s stand on sex-related issues is a legitimate story. But the media have been telling that “same . . . preset story . . . over and over,” for years, says David Toolan, associate editor of the Catholic magazine America.

O’Brien says most journalists know so little about religion that covering a papal story is “like driving in the fog. You tend to try to follow the white lines . . . you talk about birth control and women in the church and abortion . . . and priestly celibacy.”

By giving the sexual issues so much attention--and by creating a false dichotomy between a Pope who is described as “conservative” on these issues and “liberal” on issues of social justice and human rights--the media give an unbalanced picture of the Catholic Church and an incomplete portrait of the Pope.

John Paul is “a brilliant man,” with “a subtle and sophisticated mind,” Greeley says. “I don’t think the complexity of his pontificate has been adequately or accurately reported.”

The Pope has been “a stronger supporter of democracy than any of his predecessors,” says J. Bryan Hehir, professor of the practice of religion and society at the Harvard University Divinity School, but “at the same time . . . he has enormous suspicion of the cultural context that usually surrounds democracy in the industrialized democracies.”

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John Paul’s position on women presents an even more dramatic contrast. On the one hand, he has taken an old-fashioned, paternalistic, even patronizing stance toward women. In his view, their most important role is motherhood, and while they can and should be active in the church, he says Christ’s own acts, combined with centuries of church tradition, dictate that they can’t be priests. But he has also been an outspoken critic of individuals and societies that treat women as sex objects, and he has criticized husbands who exploit their wives.

The Pope’s views on those issues, as well as his outspoken opposition to totalitarianism and capital punishment--and his support for workers’ rights and redistribution of wealth--show him to be “much closer to the liberals than the liberals realize,” says Wilton Wynn, who spent 17 years in Rome for Time magazine, the last six as bureau chief, before his retirement in 1985.

But those close to the Pope say he sees no liberal / conservative split in his views, no contradiction between his stand on sexual / moral issues and his stand on social / political issues. In his latest and longest encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, John Paul argues that democracies that permit abortion, euthanasia and experimentation with human embryos are promoting a “culture of death” that contradicts the very principles of democracy and “effectively moves toward a form of totalitarianism.”

John Paul sees morality and politics as interdependent, and his views on both are integral elements in his fundamental philosophy about the dignity and sanctity of each human life and the need for unwavering, clearly defined ethical standards of behavior, for individuals and governments alike.

“Does that mean you have to hold his position on contraception if you’re going to hold his position on human rights?” asks Hehir, the Harvard theologian. “No, I don’t think it does.”

But the media should try to understand the relationship between the two. Instead, most reporters write each story to fit the most convenient journalistic paradigm--”Pope Calls for Peace,” “Protesters Picket Pope”--and move on to the next story, without supplying any connective tissue for readers and viewers.

As with other subjects, coverage of the Pope--on television, even more than in newspapers and magazines--is generally based on events rather than themes, often with different reporters for each event. So a papal speech in Warsaw and a demonstration in Washington are covered as isolated--perhaps even “conflicting” events--and the resonant themes common to both are ignored.

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Grand themes, of course, are best left to historians and philosophers. Daily journalists tend to think in minutes and hours; they have a deadline today and another deadline--and another story--tomorrow. Off the job, most journalists--like most people--generally think in terms of their lives and their spouse’s and children’s lives and maybe their grandchildren’s lives. But the Pope, though obviously (and deeply) concerned with the well-being of others, is celibate; his horizons seem broader, less personal. This Pope in particular seems to think in centuries--in millennia.

John Paul II is, after all, a man who survived a near-fatal accident as a child and an assassin’s bullet as an adult. He saw his native Poland survive two seemingly invincible tyrannies--Nazism and communism. It’s not surprising that such a man seems convinced that if he perseveres, he will ultimately prevail on issues that others insist must be compromised today or the church will be rent asunder. Nor should it be surprising that most journalists would miss this dimension of his papacy in their haste to use political terms and models to describe the Pope; they, after all, are accustomed to covering politicians, whose basic art is compromise and whose fortunes depend on popularity--pleasing their constituents and communicating with them through the media.

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the director of the Vatican press office, has suggested that the news media just might not be institutionally or structurally capable of properly covering the Roman Catholic Church.

Navarro is not alone in that view.

“The American press is . . . both anti-intellectual and intensely materialistic, and the Catholic Church is an institution which is . . . dedicated to the idea that ideas really do matter in human lives, and it is also profoundly anti-materialistic,” says Tim Rutten, a Los Angeles Times reporter who has written about ideas and Catholicism for a variety of publications.

“The American press . . . is really interested only in two aspects (of the Catholic Church) . . . the costume drama and . . . sex,” Rutten says. “If it doesn’t somehow involve one of those two aspects, we’re just not very interested.”

Next: The papal spin doctor and the Vaticanisti.

Jacci Cenacveira of The Times editorial library assisted with the research for this series.