Church attacks TV channel over Pope programme

BY PIERS MCGRANDLE
CATHOLICS HAVE REACTED . angrily to a television programme last week in which the Pope was accused of . "fundamentalist" Catholicism by radical religious writer Karen Armstrong.
In a terse letter to Channel 4 boss Michael Grade, the Catholic Media Office alleged that the "Catholic community ' was subjected to unfair treat. ment". It is rare for such a formal complaint to be made ' public.
In the Channel Four programme, entitled "The Pope's Divisions", Ms Armstrong claimed the Pope's Church was "strangely out of kilter with the democratic tenor of today's world".
Fr Kieran Conry, from the Catholic Media Office, told the Catholk Herald that he had
• received many irate phone calls from viewers furious at what they perceived to be the ' anti-Catholic tone of the programme.
The Catholic Media Office letter highlighted two main areas of complaint about the programme. First, it claimed that the film "contained state' ments that were factually incorrect". It was quite wrong, the letter continued, to say that the Church teaches that "salvation is only possible through Catholicism." It was pointed out that it was the present Pope who gathered together religious leaders, of all denominations, at Assisi.
Ms Armstrong was also accused of exaggerating the doctrine of Papal infallibility, wrongly claiming that "no other religious tradition has priests or uses vestments" and stating that Mary was celibate rather than chaste.
The letter also complained that "a programme so lacking in balance as this one cannot but be abusive of the faith of Catholics".
A formal complaint was also lodged by the Dublin-based Catholic Press and Information Service, whose director Jim Cantwell complained in another letter to Channel 4 that the film's "approach to the subject was frankly infantile".
But his real bone of contention lay in the way Panoptic, the production company who made "The Pope's Divisions", treated four young people who were filmed articulating a positive attitude to the Church.
Despite being praised by Panoptic, who wrote in a letter subsequent to filming that they "very much appreciated your contribution", the youngsters were informed a few paragraphs later that due to the "particular shape the programme took" their contribution would not be included.
In his own letter to Michael Grade, Jim Cantwell concludes "We now know that.. this 'shape' would have been upset by the inclusion of views which challenged Karen Armstrogg's assumptions".
One a.tholic viewer, who contacted the Catholic Herald, said that "there was such a strong anti-Catholic bias in the programme that the programme-makers themselves would appear to be antiCatholic. Channel 4 are very fond of giving us horrid programmes by ex-priests and ex-nuns who are disenchanted with their lot. Let's see the other side".
Michael Jones, the director of "The Pope's Divisions", defended the programme. He said that it was not in any sense anti-Catholic; it was simply opening up "key issues" on matters like birth control.
"Karen Armstrong articulates the views of many Catholics.... there is a closing off of the debate, and this isn't very healthy for the Church".