Catholic Media Convention Day 1

Jim Myers and I began the day at a small breakfast with EWTN communications director Michelle Johnson, who I had communicated with for some time when she was the editor for The Catholic Standard & Times in Philadelphia until late last year. The Standard & Times is the source of the much-debated "Christian or New Age" series that we ran last fall.

The convention was kicked off with a talk by McGill University law professor and ethicist Margaret Somerville, who talked about "The Power of Language: Speaking to a Secular Age." This is a topic I am passionate about, since my vocation as a journalist involves understanding the meanings of words. Somerville talked about the battle to win hearts back to Christ is in large part a reclaiming of a language where the meaning of words have been twisted and we allow euphemisms to detach ourselves from the reality (sometimes evil) of actions taking place today. Euthanasia becomes equated with compassion and mercy rather than the killing of another person -- which is what it is, at its core. At the same time, it is the journalist's responsibility to speak the truth about a situation and use effective language that avoids terms that, when spoken, polarize the situation and leave it hard to reach the other person(s).

This led naturally into the battle today between the relationship between faith and science, where atheists like author Richard Dawkins are trying to quantify the world purely on the basis of science. Somerville said that science often disproves those who try to quantify the world purely on science. Yet we love today in a no-holds-barred research atmosphere where scientists mess with the creation of life for any reason in the name of advancing science. There are experiments going on around the world, for example, that create children with more than two different genetic lines, she said. And these sinister experiments are spoken of as being from compassion and love. The research points to something greater, a moral order. As this battle grows stronger -- and it is, according to Somerville -- and studies show that people are having a harder time knowing which media to trust, the Catholic journalist can stand tall, analyzing issues in light of the truth. She challenged Catholic journalists (and Catholics in general) to keep the debates in the public square despite the push to privatize everything. Society, she says, must set acceptable limits of behavior with scientific research.