If we live in fidelity to the Gospel, we’re vulnerable to far more than pop-culture persecution. But persecution is a part of the Christian mystery.

OUR POP CULTURE MOMENT

by James D. Conley

If we live in fidelity to the Gospel, we’re vulnerable to far more than pop-culture persecution. But persecution is a part of the Christian mystery. And, if we live authentically, openly, and faithfully, persecution will lead to victory.

On my coffee table, I have a book of classic rock posters—from The Who, to Led Zeppelin, to Nirvana, Metallica, and the Grateful Dead. The book was given to me by a brother bishop who knows that, in my earlier years, I listened to many of those bands.

I’m a Catholic bishop, entrusted with the responsibilities of Christ’s apostles. I’ve had the benefit of exposure to the richness of Western culture: to great literature, and poetry, and sacred music. But I’m not immune to the charms, and whimsy, and sometimes profound insight of American popular culture.

I also know that pop culture matters. And that our country’s political and social opinions come more often from the world of Lorne Michaels and Jon Stewart than from the staid pages of even the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. When I talk to young people about gay marriage, they’re more likely to cite Macklemore than Maureen Dowd.

This is why Marc Binelli’s profile of Pope Francis, the cover story of February’sRolling Stone, is so troubling, and so important.

The profile is an exercise in standard revisionism, bent on demonstrating Francis’ break from the supposedly conservative Church of old. Light on facts, heavy on implication, half-truths and hearsay, the piece remakes Pope Francis as the quiet hero of the liberal left. It uses the scandals of Vatican finance and sexual abuse, coupled with tired tropes about Opus Dei and the Latin Mass, to craft Pope Benedict XVI as a miserly conservative plotter. Pope Francis is the foil: the reluctant, populist leader of a move to liberalize and desacralize the Catholic Church.

It doesn’t matter how much or how little is true. Certainly, the profile contains a great deal of untruth. Inconvenient facts, such as the affability of an Opus Dei source, or the theological orthodoxy of the Holy Father, are dismissed. The piece is unbalanced in its sourcing, and it draws unreasonable conclusions from carefully selected vignettes. Over the next few weeks, bright Catholics will discredit the factual inaccuracies in the article. But what matters most is that Rolling Stone and its collaborators are working to hijack the papacy of a loyal, though often unconventional, son of the Church.

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