Sunday, June 7, 2009

Pope Benedict in Israel - The Aftermath

News

Commentary

  • 6-4-09: Francis Cardinal George of Chicago devoted a column to summarizing the key points of the papal journey in "The Holy Father in the Holy Land" (The Catholic New World).

  • 6-04-09: EWTN’s Skewed Commentary on the Pope’s Holy Land Trip - CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) takes aim at biased remarks from Brother Aloysius Florio (Vicar of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land located in Washington, D.C.).

  • 5-31-09: "A tale of three narratives", by Jonathan Mirvis (Haaretz):
    Now that this month's visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Israel has been relegated to history, it might be useful to examine the distinctly different ways in which the trip was understood by different populations.

    We can point to three contrasting "narratives" by which the event was described. The first reads as follows: "Pope visits Israel and refuses to apologize for Holocaust"; the second reads, "Pope visits Holy Land and prays at the holy places." One can find the first narrative in the Israeli media while the second is typical of the Catholic media, as well as of some of the general world media that covered the visit. There is a third narrative reflected in Israel's traditional religious media, according to which the papal visit was a non-event. For that public, the lead story of the week in question was the celebrations of Lag Ba'omer and the pilgrimage of tens of thousands to Mt. Meron.

    These narratives reflect three contrasting views relating to this region. ... [read more].