From the Pope to Pistorius: Why are we being so insensitive?

In the rush to find the most shocking news, we are even more stunned by the genuinely shocking. In the past week, two of the biggest news-quakes have been registered. When a pope hasn’t resigned in 600 years, Benedict XVI’s announcement last week qualified as a “big one”. And when a national and international sporting superstar is accused of murdering his girlfriend, that’s perhaps even more earth shattering. So how do we process papal changes and Oscar Pistorius? The initial reaction was to treat both as jokes. Certainly the pope’s move received a derision that could easily prove the perception by some Catholics that they are unfairly vilified for their beliefs. I may not agree with many of their positions of dogma and official Vatican pronouncements, but I don’t condemn the individual practitioners, just as I hope they won’t condemn me. [caption id=“attachment_631567” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The jokes about Pistorius and the pope showed tremendous insensitivity: AP[/caption] Some wrote that the resignation was the most radical thing the pope did in his time in office. Oh ha ha. Technically his attempt to bring in oversight of the Vatican Bank was more radical. . . and radical enough that everyone underneath him undermined the effort. And then there was the photo of lightning striking the Vatican after the resignation. Oh how droll - Catholics believe in “god” so the lightning must be proof he’s angry at his flock. Yes, lightning hit the building, but some in the news world treated it with almost gleeful derision at the institution. To what standard are we holding the pope and the Roman Catholic religion? A Catholic standard? Or a secularist one? I’m not condoning the cover-up of sexual abuses, corruption or other behaviours, but there is more than one side to the perception of a religious leader. As the leaks from the Vatican have shown, one man may be at the head of the church, but there are dozens and hundreds beneath him, all working in different and competing directions. And further beneath that are 1.2 billion Catholics who have varying levels of belief and practice. With Oscar Pistorius, there’s no denying that he is a hero to millions of disabled and able-bodied athletes and young people especially. Whatever happens ahead with his trial, the inspiration was important and will hopefully carry on. But the initial reaction was to make jokes about his case having “no legs to stand on” and “this wouldn’t have happened if he had no arms”. Ah comedy. Yes, the jokes were easy and part of that was a deep need to disarm (no pun intended) the seriousness of a brutal murder of a young woman. The Sun newspaper in the UK tried to make the shock worse by highlighting reports of the discovery of steroids at Pistorius’s home, ie implying he was a cheat. Secondary to that, was a bloody cricket bat at his home. The crime itself was shocking, so there was a need to deflect it with something more shocking and make it acceptable to loath a former hero. There are facts behind both Pistorius and the papal resignation. We may never know some of them, and others we learn minute to minute. But the link between both of these events is faith. Hundreds of millions of people have a faith in a god as described by the Roman Catholic church and represented on earth by the pope. An equal number or more had faith in Pistorius as an athletic god of sorts. Our own reactions to these events have shown a level of disrespect - for the beliefs of others; for the victim of a crime - and a level of cynicism that is unfortunate, but understandable. We simply don’t know how to process genuinely shocking news. With time, maybe the coverage and reactions will become more tempered and considered. And maybe faith will be strengthened for the god/gods beyond their mortal employees, and in athletic achievement beyond individual champions.