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“Small Groups and Modern Communications”

As regards TV, in dismissing a large number of protests against the decision to broadcast Jerry Springer – The Opera on 8/1/05, BBC's director-general commented, without irony, that “Small . . . groups can use . . . modern communications tools to give a false impression of size and weight”¹. This Web site had enough of one such small group and consequently ditched TV (and its licence fee) altogether. Since then, it is reported that Channel 4 has picked up the baton of anti-Christian agitation (28/12/05), this time choosing the subject of the Gospel miracles. (Earlier in the year (17/3/05), Channel 4 rebroadcast the deliberately degrading Last Temptation of Christ, ten years after first doing so. On the subject of this film, see also the link two paragraphs down.) The timing of this programme during Christmastide echoes BBC's scheduling of a film denying the Virginal Conception of Christ for transmission on 22nd December (2002). Apart from making a superfluous reference to “scientific improbability”, which is characteristic of miracles, this online defence of the BBC film asserts that “The four gospels . . . were in any case not attempts at biography as we understand it today. Each was written to advance a particular theological understanding of Jesus.” No evidence is adduced in support of this assertion. As Fr. Brian W. Harrison points out in a related paper on Scriptural interpretation, such “scholarship” involves turning “Exegesis (drawing out of the text what is really there)” into “"eisegesis" (reading into the text what each [reader] thinks ought to be there)” (emphasis in original). “Matthew”, he continues, “ . . . is not making a fictional, poetical or imaginative statement here; what he says in 1:25 belongs to the "genre," as it were, of "fact-statement." . . . [T]here are no degrees or grades or different "senses" of physical virginity. Since a woman either has had intercourse with a man or she has not, there is only one possible "sense" in which the inspired writer's affirmation in Matthew 1:25 can be true, namely, the obvious one.” Nothing, however, is too obvious for Channel 4, which has rehashed the same old self-contradictory nonsense, with, apparently, the wholehearted endorsement of The Daily Mail², just in time for Christmas 2006. (See the commentary at the end of the above link to Matthew 1:25, plus this Catholic Encyclopaedia article for a refutation of Channel 4's “sensational new claim” together with its ancient pedigree.) The channel had also wanted to broadcast a Mohammedan message to commemorate the Christian Feast of the Nativity. Not wishing to disappoint them, we hope they can find comfort in this alternative alternative Christmas message.

According to The Times (27/1/06), BBC's penchant for blasphemy is to take on a bizarre new twist this Good Friday. On a positive note, Protestant group Christian Voice is being credited with success in its protest against the national tour of the theatrical production, Jerry Springer – The Opera. BBC has meanwhile taken the view that broadcasting still images of newspaper cartoons depicting Mohammed would be “excessively offensive”. This, it is “argued”, should be contrasted with the corporation's showing of Springer. Why? For the circular reason that BBC chose to do the latter, and chose not to do the former. (At least The Guardian could spot the hypocrisy of this New Zealand television station.) T.V. licence payers' funding of Springer clearly proving insufficient, the Arts Council has decided to give £30,000 of taxpayers' money to sponsor the production's national tour. This from a Government that tells us that “religious content has a particular capacity to offend those with different views and opinions”. The Government also defines households with an income of less than £10,000 as being below the 'poverty line'³.

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1The current director-general of BBC having been baptised, the popular view among Liberals is that he therefore speaks for Catholicism. This is like saying that a person who was once enrolled in an elementary physics class is qualified to give a lecture on wave-particle duality. Catholic doctrine is objective and independent of the layman's opinion. The Church does claim a role to determine the content of that doctrine, but the role is not that of a legislature of popular representatives (therefore giving some weight to “voter” opinion), rather it is that of an authoritative arbitrator. Indeed, submission to that authority is part and parcel of being within the Church. The principal documentary source of this authority's rulings is the Catechism. (It should also be noted that the Catechism contains the rulings of the proper authority – the Church – not the dissenting opinions of Cardinal X or Bishop Y.)

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	“Small Groups and Modern Communications”
	As regards TV, in dismissing a large number of protests against the decision to broadcast Jerry Springer – The Opera on 8/1/05, BBC's director-general commented, without irony, that “Small . . . groups can use . . . modern communications tools to give a false impression of size and weight”¹. This Web site had enough of one such small group and consequently ditched TV (and its licence fee) altogether. Since then, it is reported that Channel 4 has picked up the baton of anti-Christian agitation (28/12/05), this time choosing the subject of the Gospel miracles. (Earlier in the year (17/3/05), Channel 4 rebroadcast the deliberately degrading Last Temptation of Christ, ten years after first doing so. On the subject of this film, see also the link two paragraphs down.) The timing of this programme during Christmastide echoes BBC's scheduling of a film denying the Virginal Conception of Christ for transmission on 22nd December (2002). Apart from making a superfluous reference to “scientific improbability”, which is characteristic of miracles, this online defence of the BBC film asserts that “The four gospels . . . were in any case not attempts at biography as we understand it today. Each was written to advance a particular theological understanding of Jesus.” No evidence is adduced in support of this assertion. As Fr. Brian W. Harrison points out in a related paper on Scriptural interpretation, such “scholarship” involves turning “Exegesis (drawing *out of* the text what is really there)” into “"eisegesis" (reading *into* the text what each [reader] thinks ought to be there)” (emphasis in original). “Matthew”, he continues, “ . . . is not making a fictional, poetical or imaginative statement here; what he says in 1:25 belongs to the "genre," as it were, of "fact-statement." . . . [T]here are no degrees or grades or different "senses" of physical virginity. Since a woman either has had intercourse with a man or she has not, there is only one possible "sense" in which the inspired writer's affirmation in Matthew 1:25 can be true, namely, the obvious one.” Nothing, however, is too obvious for Channel 4, which has rehashed the same old self-contradictory nonsense, with, apparently, the wholehearted endorsement of The Daily Mail², just in time for Christmas 2006. (See the commentary at the end of the above link to Matthew 1:25, plus this Catholic Encyclopaedia article for a refutation of Channel 4's “sensational new claim” together with its ancient pedigree.) The channel had also wanted to broadcast a Mohammedan message to commemorate the Christian Feast of the Nativity. Not wishing to disappoint them, we hope they can find comfort in this alternative alternative Christmas message.
	According to The Times (27/1/06), BBC's penchant for blasphemy is to take on a bizarre new twist this Good Friday. On a positive note, Protestant group Christian Voice is being credited with success in its protest against the national tour of the theatrical production, Jerry Springer – The Opera. BBC has meanwhile taken the view that broadcasting still images of newspaper cartoons depicting Mohammed would be “excessively offensive”. This, it is “argued”, should be contrasted with the corporation's showing of Springer. Why? For the circular reason that BBC chose to do the latter, and chose not to do the former. (At least The Guardian could spot the hypocrisy of this New Zealand television station.) T.V. licence payers' funding of Springer clearly proving insufficient, the Arts Council has decided to give £30,000 of taxpayers' money to sponsor the production's national tour. This from a Government that tells us that “religious content has a particular capacity to offend those with different views and opinions”. The Government also defines households with an income of less than £10,000 as being below the 'poverty line'³.
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