Vatican goes Fox News

Lately, it's seemed like the leadership of the Catholic Church has become a subsidiary of the Republican Party. Indeedity-doodledy, one of few forums where people praise the church's increasingly conservative direction is Free Republic - a once-thriving right-wing website that is now on the brink of irrelevance.

It's not like the church's institutions were a mainstay of liberality previously. But under Pope Benedict XVI, it sounds like the entire church has become like my high school.

The Vatican has now hired Fox News Channel correspondent Greg Burke as its senior communications adviser. Burke is a member of the ultraconservative Opus Dei - a fact that highlights the relationship between the church's conservative elements and right-wing American media organizations.

Opus Dei has helped stage-manage much of the debate about issues that are important to folks all over America (if not the world). Now right-wing media figures get to help control what gets disseminated by the Vatican.

The Vatican acts as if the church's woes are due only to bad PR. Some church leaders even blame the media for the church's scandals. But that's far from reality. In fact, the press has actually given relatively little coverage to scandals within church institutions. I know this firsthand, because the local media engaged in a total cover-up of the financial malfeasance and other corruption at my former high school. And trust me, the local press knew about it, because I made sure they knew.

(Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/23/vatican-gets-fox-media-ad_n_1621259.html)